


Illuminated

by lizardwriter



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 16:29:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizardwriter/pseuds/lizardwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU series 4 (or how series 4 would have gone if I had written it) - Katie's world has crashed, Panda's heartbroken, Freddie's stuck, Emily's struggling, Effy's cynical, JJ wants things to be normal, Thomas misses his roots, Cook misses Freddie, Naomi's facing her fears, and nothing's ever easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Katie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katie's world has come crashing down around her.

_Yeah, we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun._

-John Lennon

The stars twirl above her. Maybe it’s just the alcohol and the drugs in her system, but she doesn’t care. The patterns the sky is painting make it all worth it.

She likes staring at the stars, not that anybody besides Emily really knows that. Ever since they watched that meteor shower when they were five and she saw her first shooting star.

For now, lying here on her back, the twirling stars, the never-ending night sky stretching out before her, it’s enough, it puts her restless mind temporarily at ease. For right now, it doesn’t matter that everything’s gone tits up, that her entire fucking world’s changed...is still changing for that matter, and as far as she can tell it’s fucking not for the better.

A star darts across the sky, a small blazing trail of white light millions of trillions of light-years away, no doubt, but she lets it carry away her burden, sends it packing off into the cosmos, and she lies back to watch the stars dance.

\--                                                   

Reality is like a bomb exploding around her. Or maybe more like a building being demolished, collapsing around her, foundation crumbling to dust. _Her_ foundation’s fucking crumbling to dust.

She’d like to say it started with a rock, but it started before that if she’s honest with herself. Before college ever started and Effy Stonem entered her life. Before Naomi Campbell became a name she couldn’t stand. Before Emily kissed a girl at a party.

If she’s being honest, it started with her. It started with that first nagging doubt that she might not actually be in control of her own destiny, despite what her dad always told her. It started the first time she did something, not for her or for Ems, but for popularity, for style, for the sake of being cool.

It’s a shite reason to do anything. She knows that now. Now it’s too late. Now that ‘being cool’ isn’t even a fucking option for her any more.

Now that there’s a scar on her temple. Now that her own fucking sister, her twin for fuck’s sake, has abandoned her for the sake of love (and she can’t even begrudge her it because she’s fucking _happy_ and Katie would give anything to be happy). Now that her dad’s lost his gym (and their house in the process) and her mum’s working two jobs just so they have a place to fucking put the caravan her dad managed to dredge up from somewhere, and they’re still barely making ends meet.

Now that she’s fucking barren, never to know the joy of having a child of her own, never to experience the miracle of creating life inside her.

Now that all of the dreams she had for the future have collapsed around her, demolished in the span of a day. Blasted by the bomb that is reality.

\--

She glares out at the sea, feeling the bitterly cold spray hit her cheeks as a wave slaps against the rock she’s sitting on. Stupid fucking class trip. Who has class trips at this age? Fucking Doug and fucking Roundview, apparently. Class trips are for when you’re ten, not eighteen. They’re not for when you have so much fucking revision to do for subjects you probably won’t even fucking pass anyway that you feel like you’re drowning in it. That’s what she thinks, anyway. God only knows how Doug thinks a trip to the beach is supposed to relax them at a time like this.

Emily and Naomi seem to be having a blast, regardless of the fact that the sky is grey and overcast and the water’s fucking frigid. They’re daring each other to run in and out of the surf or some shite. Love apparently makes you ridiculously stupid, not that she’d know from personal experience.

She feels her before she hears her, and she doesn’t have to turn to know that Effy Stonem has settled beside her. She’s the only one who seems to enjoy sneaking up on people like that.

She doesn’t turn. She doesn’t speak. She just continues to glare at the waves, gazing out to where the bleak water is swallowed by the grey fog on the horizon.

It’s the hand on hers, where it sits pressing into the cold, hard rock, feeling the grit beneath it, that finally makes her react, because Effy Stonem does not have the fucking right to touch her, not after everything that’s happened.

She snaps her hand away and clutches it protectively in her lap. “What the fuck?!”

When Effy doesn’t immediately respond she turns her glare on her, but of course she’s met with that fucking intense, stunningly blue, seeing-right-through-her stare that only Effy can give, and it shakes her like it always does.

“Haven’t you like got a boyfriend to go be happy and in love with? One you stole, perhaps? Or are you looking for someone else’s to steal now you’ve had him for a bit?” Katie spits at her, but Effy doesn’t move.

“I’ve heard it gets better,” Effy finally volunteers, and it’s so just fucking cryptic and off topic that Katie has to respond with a baffled and slightly annoyed, “What?”

Effy looks away and gestures generally out at the universe. “Everything, in theory.”

“You don’t actually believe that,” Katie scoffs, because nobody is that naive, least of all Effy.

Effy shrugs.

“Has love fucking messed with your mind or something?”

Effy’s eyes flash back to hers for a second, then out across the water once more. “Who said anything about love, Katie?”

“Isn’t that like why you stole my fucking boyfriend?” Katie points out.

Effy’s face is so hard to read, but Katie would swear that she detects the tiniest flinch in her features. _Good_ , she thinks.

“What, isn’t love good enough or something?” Katie prods, because against her better judgement she’s fucking curious (and rather annoyed) now.

There’s another infuriating shrug from Effy, and then, perhaps, the first honest words Effy’s said to her in ages. “Nothing’s ever perfect, you know?”

It cuts through her, much deeper than she thinks it reasonably should, until it’s tearing into her heart. Maybe that’s why she replies with, “I thought it could be.”

Judging by the piercing gaze that’s once again directed at her (or through her), she doesn’t need to elaborate, and, God knows, she probably shouldn’t, but her mouth keeps moving and her vocal chords keep vibrating so that words continue to escape her lips.

“I wanted the perfect boyfriend, the perfect marriage, perfect everything.”

To her surprise, there’s no smug smirk, no belittling look, no blow off from Effy at all. There’s just a question asked in a genuine tone. “What’s changed?”

The answer to that is far too simple, and far too painful. “Me.”

Effy holds her gaze for a moment longer, then reaches in her top and produces a tin of cigarettes. She opens it and extracts one, producing a lighter from somewhere. She sparks up, cupping her hand around it to protect the flame from the wind. Wordlessly she inhales, then offers the cigarette to Katie.

She doesn’t smoke, but, fuck it. What’s the point in not, these days? She takes it and inhales, coughing embarrassingly.

Effy finally does smirk, then, shaking her head slightly before reaching up and touching Katie’s chest. “You’ve got to breathe here.”

“Fuck off,” Katie mumbles, more because she feels she should than for any particular desire for it to happen (which is strange to think). She does as instructed, though, and the smoke goes in smoother this time. Just a single cough, which almost sounds like she’s clearing her throat, instead.

“Better?” Effy asks, and again Katie can’t help but be struck by the apparent sincerity of the question.

She can’t for the life of her understand why Effy would suddenly give a fuck. She bites back a retort to that effect because, whether she understands it or not, Effy Stonem’s being nice to her in a way she never used to be, and it’s really not half bad sitting here with her, so she nods instead.

“Funny how you’ll do lines of Uncle Keith’s special concoction, but you don’t smoke,” Effy muses after a minute in which they just sit and smoke in a silence that Katie might almost call comfortable if it were with anyone else.

“Yeah, well, smoking only fucks you up in the long, slow, painful death kind of way, not in the making things not shite and having the room spin way. Hardly seems worth it,” Katie replies.

“Until now,” Effy says, and it almost sounds like a suggestion of a question, so Katie shrugs.

“I guess.”

\--

They don’t talk anymore, but Effy stays there, on the rock, beside her, even after the cigarette’s done, the butt flicked out into a crashing wave that makes Katie think of the reprimand Naomi would have given them if she’d seen. _Fuck her_ , she thinks.

When Doug calls out that they’re to head back to the bus, Effy stands first and offers Katie a hand. Katie only hesitates for a second before taking it. They climb off the rock side by side before Effy slips away silently and disappears amongst the other students.

 _Off to find Freddie,_ Katie thinks, surprised to find that there’s no bitterness to her thoughts.

“Have fun sulking, Katiekins?” Naomi asks from her right, and she sighs.

“Naomi!” Emily scolds half-heartedly, but Katie sees through the act.

“Whatever. At least my sodding feet won’t be frozen the whole ride back,” Katie replies before walking purposefully away, ignoring the way that they turn to each other with those loved-up smiles and looks that say ‘that may be so, but it was so fucking worth it’.

\--

She sits next to Panda on the bus because now that she’s not with Thomas anymore and doesn’t talk quite as much, she’s actually half decent company. Even when she _is_ prattling on about something or other like she is now, it serves to distract Katie from her thoughts enough that she can almost just settle back and enjoy the ride.

It’s not until she glances idly up the aisle that she catches a familiar pair of stunningly blue eyes staring back at her from a few seats up and across the aisle. Effy offers her a small smile when their eyes meet, and Katie can’t not notice that she’s not sitting next to Freddie (or Cook, for that matter). It’s not quite a genuine smile, but it’s not really a smirk either, so maybe, Katie thinks, she’ll just take it, and she offers a small, half-smile back of her own.

When Pandora catches her attention again, Katie can’t ignore the thought in the back of her brain that suggests that even though this whole trip was fucking stupid, she feels, for whatever reason, marginally more relaxed and at ease. 


	2. Pandora

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pandora's heartbroken.

_I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me._

-Ralph Ellison, _Invisible Man_

It’s not the same now she’s not with Thomas. She knew, logically it wouldn’t be, but she can’t help hoping. What’s a world without hope, right?

She still misses him, even though she knows she shouldn’t and Effy says he’s being a right wanker anyway, but he was her right wanker for a while, and she doesn’t think he’s a wanker at all. Not really.

He just couldn’t deal with what she’d done. She was the wanker. She bogged everything up, and now Thomas isn’t hers anymore.

\--

She studies more. She’s got time, now that Effy’s busy a lot (with Freddie mostly, she’s pretty sure), and now that Thomas isn’t hers and has a job working at a local green grocers anyway, plus he’s still running his club nights, so it’s not like he’d have time to date her even if they were together.

And it’s not like she always gets her studies, but some of it she’s actually finding kind of interesting now that she’s got the time to look at it properly (and maybe it helps that she’s been studying with Katie sometimes who yells at her when she gets too hyper or starts talking too much, and always grabs her hand when she’s bouncing the pencil to some beat that’s usually so infectious she forgets she’s supposed to be reading the text book at all and starts humming up some tune to go along with it). Like, she still doesn’t get why the _Invisible Man_ is called that when the man in it apparently isn’t invisible. She guesses it’s because he feels like it somehow, and the teacher says it’s because of the colour of his skin and the time he’s living in, and Pandora doesn’t understand the skin colour thing because she just doesn’t get why that would matter, but she gets the feeling invisible in the time she’s in bit, so she manages to do a decent essay on it.

She’s definitely invisible to Thomas. Effy sometimes, too, these days, and she’s supposed to be her bestest bestie, so she’s not quite sure how that happened exactly. She guesses that Katie’s almost like her new bestest bestie, except for she’s not sure Katie really sees her either because there are definitely times when she’s talking and she knows that Katie just isn’t listening at all.

\--

“All men are wankers!” Katie declares as she slumps onto the couch beside Pandora.

“I thought you had a date tonight.” She frowns because she’s sure that Katie told her she had a date tonight, and it’s only half eight so she should really still be on the date.

“Yeah, well, the arsehole took one look at the caravan when he picked me up and started laughing so I kicked him to the curb. He can have fun wanking off tonight because I’m sure as fuck not giving him any.”

Pandora nods. “That’s good because surf and turf isn’t a good idea without feelings like Naomi and Emily have. It just makes people go ape-shit bonkers and bogs everything up otherwise.” She covers her mouth a moment later when she realises exactly what she’s said, because if there’s one thing she’s learned about Katie over the past few months, it’s that she doesn’t like talking about Naomi and Emily much. Pandora reckons that’s because she thinks Emily’s abandoned her, but Pandora knows that’s not true because she can see that they love each other, and besides they’re twins, so it’s like biologically impossible for them to abandon each other. Maybe Katie just feels invisible to Emily sometimes because Emily loves Naomi, too.

She waits for the glare, or the exasperated sigh, or the minor explosion that always seems to follow a mention of Naomi and Emily (or Naomily as Pandora likes to think of them...like Brangelina or something, only gay and younger and not off in Hollywood), but it doesn’t come.

“Yeah. You’re probably right. Ems says it’s better, anyway. I still think love is bollocks, though.”

She can’t help noticing how sad Katie sounds when she says that, and she knows that Katie doesn’t really not believe in love because how can she when the evidence is there in front of her. It almost seems like maybe Katie just thinks she’ll never have love. Not the love like Naomily have anyway.

She can understand that. She’s not sure she’ll ever have it either. Not anymore.

\--

She’s not sure why, exactly, she thought this would be a good idea. Obviously after everything that happened last year there were going to be issues. People may not think she’s the smartest person in the world, but she’s not that dumb. It’s just that they’re the only two people in her life right now that she really considers friends and cares about, and it would just a be lot better if they could get on because then maybe she wouldn’t feel slightly guilty for the time she spends with the other one.

They seemed all right on the trip. She saw them talking. Plus at school last week they took the same side in a debate in class. And yesterday she saw them kind of nod at each other when they passed in the hallway. That had to mean things could be okay, right?

Except now they’re staring awkwardly at each other across her kitchen, and nobody’s saying anything, and she’s sure if the silence goes on for much longer she might explode.

“Has anyone got any drugs?”

She doesn’t really want any especially since, in her experience, they just bog things up as much as surf and turf does if not more, but she’s not sure of what else to say and something needs to jolly well break the tension in here.

Effy produces a small bag of pills from her pocket and Katie snorts.

“Of fucking course,” Katie mutters not quite under her breath.

Effy shrugs. “Never know when they’ll come in handy.”

“You seem to think they always do,” Katie retorts, and Pandora knows that she wanted the silence broken and communication happening, but them having a row in her kitchen isn’t quite what she had in mind.

Effy puts the pills back in her pocket and says, “I think you’re confusing me with Freddie,” in a plain voice, but Pandora’s sure that she can detect a hint of something else in there, too.

“Not hard since you’re practically attached at the hip these days,” Katie points out.

Effy looks away, then, out the window, and Pandora thinks maybe she’s just stopped caring about friends now that she’s got Freddie or something because otherwise why would she be ignoring them so obviously, except then Effy talks.

“No we’re not,” she says, squinting at the horizon out the window before turning hard eyes on Katie, and Pandora feels practically invisible in her own house.

There’s silence again. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe it will just stretch on and on like the last one. Her head might explode, but maybe that’s a better alternative to having them fight.

“What happened to love?” Katie finally asks.

Pandora can’t help feeling like she’s missed part of the conversation, but that’s not exactly a new thing, especially when Effy’s around, so instead of interjecting to try to find out what she’s missed, she just turns to look at Effy, who shrugs again.

“Love’s not everything.”

“Nothing’s ever perfect, right?” Katie replies.

When Effy grins that half grin of hers, Pandora knows for sure she’s missed something, but whatever she missed seems to have finally broken the tension because Katie relaxes a bit and leans forwards against the island in the middle of the kitchen, and Effy kind of slides around it gracefully and wraps an arm around Pandora’s waist, and suddenly things feel loads better.

“So there’s an off-license near here that will sell to me. We could get a bottle of vodka and go talk about the inadequacies of the universe and love,” Effy suggests.

Pandora really doesn’t want to drink, but Katie kinda smiles and nods, and she’s feeling the most hopeful she has in weeks, so she goes along. It’s not like she’ll have to drink anyway, she knows. Effy can drink enough for both of them and still somehow end up sober. It’s one of the things about her that occasionally makes Pandora think that she’s secretly some sorceress or some witch like in _Harry Potter_ who’s got the spells for grace and beauty and drinking as much as you want while staying sober. There are other times, though, times that she’s pretty sure only she’s gotten to see, when Effy breaks just like everybody else, and Pandora remembers that they’re all just human.

\--

It becomes a regular thing, them all hanging out, and she suspects that Effy might have broken up with Freddie because that’s the only explanation she can come up with for why Effy’s suddenly around more, even though they still kinda look like they’re together when they’re at college. She doesn’t want to ask because, for starters, Freddie’s still not an overly popular subject with Katie and Katie hasn’t brought it up, which makes her feel like she can’t. Besides, she’s hardly going to complain. It’s nice having Effy around more again.

She realises that she missed Effy more than she ever missed Thomas. Maybe it’s just that friends are more important than lovers. Then again, when she watches Naomi and Emily together she thinks that maybe it’s just better when the friends and lovers are the same people because she can see it in them: the way that they’re both best friends and lovers and somehow that makes them stronger. She never really was friends with Thomas and maybe that was the problem. Maybe they were doomed to fail.

She’s definitely not about to suggest to Effy or Katie that they become lovers just because they’re her friends, because as much as she knows Naomily like it, she can’t help thinking that it’d be a bit icky having sex with a girl. She doesn’t think it’s her cup of tea.

She just probably hasn’t met the right friend, yet, she reckons. The right one who’ll turn into more and be able to be both her friend and her lover.

Then again, it doesn’t seem like Effy or Katie has met that right friend either, so maybe, for now, it’s enough that they have each other.

As Effy links her arm through one of Pandora’s and Katie links her arm through the other and they set off from Effy’s house, Pandora has to smile. She thinks her days of invisibility might just be behind her. 


	3. Freddie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freddie's stuck and confused.

_When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us._

-Alexander Graham Bell

 

 

It should be perfect. He’s got her now...he thinks he does, at least. Except she rarely looks him in the eye. Rarely looks at him at all, really, when they’re together.

She stares at the ceiling, or watches the people around them when they’re out, or she looks straight through him. It’s only the rare moment when he feels that she’s truly looking at him, and when she does, it cuts him to his core; that impossible blue stabbing straight into his heart and making him love her. It’s a surreal beauty, hers, and it never fades or blurs no matter how much spliff he’s smoked.

He finds he can’t trust it, though, this thing they have together. When her eyes flick around a room, he can’t help thinking that she’s looking for someone else to fuck, someone to fuck him over with.

And then there’s Cook. He can’t stop the surge of mad jealousy that races through him whenever Cook’s around her.

Cook being Cook, of course, acts like nothing’s changed and nothing’s wrong, and like the world is one big fucking joke, despite that they haven’t had a fucking conversation in over two months. Wanker.

So why does he miss him then? Why does he miss anyone when Effy’s wrapped in his arms? When her lips are on his? When her small, delicate hands are cupping his face?

\--

They only talk when they’re high. He doesn’t know why, exactly, but it just always seems to turn out that way.

It’s beautiful out today. So fucking beautiful that he can hardly stand it, but it pales in comparison to her lying beside him.

He turns his head and watches as her lips move and her eyes shine so incredibly brightly, and then a giggle erupts from her throat as she points at something, and he’s not even remotely sober enough to have followed anything that she’s said (but he fucking loves listening to the sound of her voice) or to follow her finger to see what she’s looking at and laughing at, but he laughs, too, anyway.

“You’re beautiful,” he tells her, gasping it out because the weight of his love is just, like, pushing on his chest or something, and he can’t quite breathe right with her just right there.

She laughs, and it’s the most incredible sound in the world to his ears.

“No, really, you’re just like...Look, right? Just look...You’re so...just...I love you,” he says, trying and failing to form a coherent thought, but the last bit’s the important bit anyway. Love’s what matters. It’s the only thing that really matters.

Something’s off, though. He doesn’t know what exactly, but she’s not laughing anymore. She’s not even smiling anymore. She’s just looking at him with those eyes.

 _Blue._ _So blue._ _Bluer than the sky._ _Bluer than the sea...But water’s not blue, right?_ _So it’s not the sea that’s blue._ _It’s just...stuff...reflections or something, right?_ _But there’s different blues in different seas._

He’s getting off track and something at the back of his drug-addled mind is nudging at him to try to focus because this might be important, so he gets back to where he started.

 _Blue._ _Beautiful, beautiful blue._

Effy’s finger trails down his cheek, and he feels instantly hot...too hot. He tugs unconsciously at his jumper.

“You beautiful boy,” she sighs, but it doesn’t feel like a compliment coming from her lips. It sounds sad.

She sounds sad. Why does she sound sad? She shouldn’t be sad. He’s there for her. He loves her. _Don’t be sad_ , he thinks.

Her finger traces across his bottom lip and he kisses it instinctively.

“You deserve so much better,” she says, but it’s so soft that he thinks she might be talking to herself.

She kisses him, and he starts to relax a bit because this at least he can handle, high, sober, or otherwise.

She pulls away much too soon and he furrows his brows in confusion.

“Go find the better, Freds,” she tells him, whispering the words against his lips. “Go love someone who’s not me. Someone that love is enough for.”

He doesn’t understand it at all, what she’s saying. It doesn’t make sense.

His mouth goes dry as she rolls away from him in the grass, then gracefully pushes herself to her feet.

“Goodbye,” she says with a sad smile, and then she’s walking away.

He doesn’t get it, though. Why’s she saying goodbye? Why’s she leaving? Why’s this feel like something’s ending and the whole world’s just been pulled out from under him?

He finally processes enough to make him scramble to his feet, but his balance seems off and he can’t quite seem to make them work just right. He probably shouldn’t have had that last spliff.

By the time he’s worked out how to propel himself forward, she’s gone, vanished, like magic.

He looks around again, just to be sure, but like the seeds from those white dandelion puff balls carried off by the wind, she’s gone, travelled already out of his reach.

\--

Karen forces his window open and the morning light is harsh. Too fucking harsh.

“Go away! It’s early. I want to sleep,” he moans at her.

“It’s fucking two in the afternoon,” she admonishes.

Shit. Is it really? He glances at his watch and discovers that she appears to be correct. His motivation to move isn’t changed by that fact. “Fuck off, Karen.”

“No!” she says forcefully, sitting down on the edge of his bed. “You’ve been laying around here like a fucking useless lump, stoned out of your mind for weeks now, and I’m sick of it. Besides, I need to practice, so sit up and let me cut your hair. You fucking need it. And a shave.”

He groans and rolls over, hoping that she’ll lose interest and go away.

She doesn’t. Instead, she pokes him...hard. “And a shower.”

He sighs, when another few minutes pass and she simply continues to poke and prod him until he just gives in.

At least some female wants his company, even if it is his fucking sister, who he can’t stand half the time because she’s just so good at acting like a bitch that it’s sometimes just easy to forget that she actually probably cares about him more than anyone else in the world does.

\--

He doesn’t go talk to Cook, but as he sits in the shed and stares at the picture of the three of them, the three fucking musketeers, he wishes that he could. He wishes that Cook, the Cook he knows is in there somewhere, the one that actually gives a shit sometimes and didn’t fuck both Effy and Karen, and isn’t a total wanker one hundred percent of the time, would be the one who’d receive him if he did.

It feels like a fucking hole’s been ripped out of his chest and he can’t even go to his best mate to talk to him about it because his best mate had her first and loved her too, even if it wasn’t really the same.

What he really doesn’t fucking get is why this hole in his chest feels like it’s been there longer than since Effy dumped him. It feels like maybe he needs Cook to fucking help fix it.

\--

Katie smiles at him sadly from across the classroom, and given that it’s the first fucking smile she’s offered him since the Love Ball, he knows she knows. Maybe everyone knows.

He can’t help wondering if everyone includes Cook.

He asks to go to the loo and he slips outside and lights up a spliff.

By the time he manages to make it back to class a good fifteen minutes later, he’s feeling a bit better, or at least, a bit more like he can handle sitting in the hell-hole that is Roundview College.

\--

He thinks that maybe if he had a reason, if she’d maybe just explain to him what went wrong, what he did, then maybe he’d be able to make peace with it.

She doesn’t, though. She doesn’t offer him anything apart from the occasional pitying look in the hallways.

He doesn’t get it, and it feels like it’s driving him a bit mad, so he finally corners her just outside of college.

“Just tell me what I did!” he argues, because she’s giving him nothing.

She just shakes her head and looks past him, and it’s infuriating, really, trying to have a conversation with someone that he’s given so much to when she can’t even seem to give him back a few words of explanation.

“Just give me a reason,” he says, and he’s practically begging now. Why can’t she give him a reason? Just one.

“We’re not meant to be, Freddie,” she finally informs him with a sigh.

It’s bollocks. He knows it’s bollocks. He wanted a real reason, not this shite.

It’s a heavy hand on his shoulder that stops him. “Give it a rest, mate. Just leave it.”

Effy slips past them without a look back, and Freddie swats Cook’s hand away. He’s the last person he wants touching him right now.

When he looks up, Cook’s just looking at him, squinting a little against the sun, forehead wrinkled a bit, and his lips pursed.

They stand there, just staring at each other for a few moments, and then Cook shrugs with one shoulder and pulls a fag out of his trousers. “Right, well, see you, then.”

\--

It’s five words, he counts out later. Five stupid words. Five stupid words and a look. A look that said that maybe the old Cook, the real Cook, the one who punched Andrew Sanders in the face when he said no wonder Freddie’s mum killed herself and who turned down a date from Christina Muller after she’d broken up with him, even though Freddie knew that he was dying to get in her knickers; the Cook he’d become friends with all those years ago was still there, inside, waiting for a chance to come out.

Five words that sounded almost like a promise.

Five words that made him stop missing things, just for a second. 


	4. Emily

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily's struggling with family.

_I would like more sisters, that the taking out of one might not leave such a stillness._

-Emily Dickinson

 

 

She had thought it would be easier than this. She’d thought that after Katie’s talk with their mum, after she’d finally seemed like she’d gotten the message that if she didn’t learn to accept and to change, she might lose both her daughters, that she’d come around, really come around and start to change. She’d thought everything would finally start to get better.

It seems her mother has some short term memory loss or something, though.

Katie, too. She’d been so much better for the span of about a week, and then something had shifted again and now it seems like Katie can barely look at her. It’s never been this bad, and Emily doesn’t understand it at all.

She had thought Katie was over the whole gay thing. She’d thought she was over the whole Naomi thing, too, because yeah, okay, she gets that they’ve never exactly been best friends and old relationships are hard to change, but Katie had seemed like she’d at least stopped hating her guts for a little while.

 _Change is always hard,_ she recalls her dad saying to her once upon a time.

She wishes it weren’t so bloody true.

\--

“On the bright side, she didn’t slam the door in my face, and Katie was notably silent on the bitchy comments. That’s something, right?” Naomi soothes, running slender fingers through her hair, and Emily knows she’s attempting to make light of the situation, attempting to make her laugh or smile or anything so she’ll feel better about the complete shite that was their family dinner.

“Katie didn’t look directly at us once all night. And my mum is the biggest fucking bitch on the planet. I don’t fucking understand why she can’t just _try_ to be civil to you. Does she not get that we don’t fucking _have_ to go over for dinner?”

Naomi sighs and pulls her in tight, kissing her hair. “We do, though. They’re your family, Ems.”

“Wish they’d remember that,” Emily mutters sullenly, but Naomi’s fingers are stroking through her hair again, and Naomi’s lips are placing light kisses on her forehead and then her nose, and it’s remarkably calming, that.

“They do. They will,” Naomi whispers before placing a tender kiss on her lips, and it sounds like a promise, but Emily knows it’s just wishful thinking.

She breathes in deep, breathing in everything that’s Naomi, and she reminds herself that all of this, every single second of it, is worth it because of her.

\--

“Look, I know we haven’t been like close or whatever, but if I stay in that fucking caravan for one more day with Mum and Dad and James I might actually kill one of them, and I don’t really want to take my A-levels from prison.”

She’s tempted to just close the door, except her sister’s holding a duffel bag over one shoulder and trailing a rolling suitcase behind her, and she looks absolutely frazzled.

If she thinks she can just waltz in here and move in like she owns the place, though –

Naomi’s hand on her shoulder kills the sarcastic response she’s about to give.

“Come on in. We’ve got that spare room still,” Naomi invites, guiding Emily back out of the doorway so that Katie can step inside, and Emily’s flooded by a wave of overwhelming love for her girlfriend because sometimes Naomi’s really just perfect and knows what she needs better than she does.

\--

They’re letting her live there, so Emily can’t help thinking that her sister should be a little more fucking grateful for it. Instead she still barely looks at them, not when they’re together. And the fucking snarky comments just keep coming, and okay Naomi prods her on a bit by being just as sarcastic and bitchy back half the time (and Emily secretly suspects that they both enjoy that a bit), but it’s wearing on her nerves.

It’s when she and Naomi are making French toast, and Naomi leans in for a tender kiss after she’s cracked an egg and Emily can’t resist the urge to spray a little of the confectioner’s sugar she’s just gotten from the cupboard at her unsuspecting girlfriend, who then pretends to pout and looks so fucking adorable that Emily has to kiss the pout (and the sugar) off her face, and she catches Katie standing in the doorway out of the corner of her eye just for a second before Katie’s face is masked in a sneer and she’s grumbling something about “ fucking lezzer displays of affection” that Emily finally cracks.

She leaves Naomi’s warm and oh-so-inviting embrace, and catches her sister just before she can head up the stairs, grabbing her by the wrist and spinning her around.

“What is it? What is your fucking problem? What do you find so fucking repulsive about the love that Naomi and I have for each other that makes you unable to even fucking look at us? Because you don’t have to live here, yeah? If I wanted family members being all superior and disapproving and not really looking at us, I’d go round the caravan more often and spend time with Mum!”

Maybe it’s because part of Katie still doesn’t expect her to stand up to her, but suddenly her sister is standing before her looking so incredibly small with tears springing to her eyes, and she just looks so _sad_ that Emily just wants to take back everything she’s just said.

Except she can’t because everything she’s said is true, and she’s really reached the limit of what she can tolerate of her sister’s recent behaviour.

“I didn’t- I don’t-“

“Don’t lie, Katie,” Emily says, and she can hear her own exhaustion with the situation in her voice.

Katie stares back at her for a moment, and Emily thinks that she might be trying to recover a little because there’s a spark of defiance there, but then a tear trickles down her sister’s cheek and she thinks maybe her sister was just trying not to cry.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be around the two of you? To see that love’s real and can make you so fucking ridiculously happy that you’re blind to what’s going on around you? Do you know how hard it is to see that and know I’ll never have it?”

The words break her, just as her sister’s breaking before her. “Katie-“ she gasps out, but she can’t get any farther than that because Katie’s shaking her head and pushing her away and slipping out the door before she can get another word out, before she can even reach out and pull her into a hug.

She stands there stunned. She didn’t realise, she didn’t know. And Katie’s wrong. She knows that. Katie will have this one day. _Everyone should have this_ , she thinks, looking up at Naomi who’s appeared in the doorway to the kitchen and has obviously overheard everything by the sympathetic expression on her face. It breaks her heart to think that Katie might not find the type of love that she’s found in Naomi. It breaks her heart again to think that Katie is sure she never will.

Naomi opens her arms wide, holding them open in an unspoken invitation, and Emily falls gratefully into them.

Naomi’s soothing her with kisses and whispered ‘it’s okay’s before Emily even realises that she’s crying.

“She’s wrong, Naoms. She’s so wrong.”

“Of course she is,” Naomi agrees, voice sounding sure, certain.

It’s that right there that makes Emily love her so much.

\--

They don’t openly talk about it. Emily tries, but Katie doesn’t want to listen, so Emily resigns herself to simply holding Katie in her bed that night, and kissing her gently on the forehead like they always used to do when they were little and one of them was upset. She hopes that Katie will come to understand that there is so much in her to love that it’s impossible she won’t find somebody to love her like she deserves.

When her sister’s drifted off to sleep in her arms, and there’s a small damp patch on her shirt from Katie’s tears, she kisses her sister on the forehead again and whispers, “I love you,” into her hair.

She looks up to find Naomi peeking in through the door, open just a crack, illuminated by the light from the hallway and making the blonde of her hair appear more like a halo around her head. “Everything okay?” Naomi asks softly.

Emily smiles at her and nods.

“Sleep well, okay? I’ll miss you,” Naomi offers, and it’s just another mark of how far she’s come since last year that Emily’s heart swells just a bit.

Emily blows her a little kiss and Naomi catches it and pretends to put it in her pocket then sends one back.

“I love you,” Naomi whispers with a soft smile that never fails to make Emily melt.

“I love you, too,” Emily replies as Naomi turns to go.

As Emily settles back down beside Katie, she realises there are tears welling up in her eyes just a bit, but, unlike earlier, these are happy ones. Sometimes she just can’t believe how lucky she is, even if her mother still can’t accept her, and her sister’s a bit of a mess which makes her act like a bitch, just because she’s got Naomi in her life.

\--

The further proof of that is the way that, without them even needing to have a discussion about it, they both just automatically tone down the PDAs around Katie.

Her sister never thanks her directly, but Katie’s quips about them lose some of their bite, and the bitchy banter with Naomi starts to seem mildly entertaining to Emily, and the biggest concession is that Katie looks at them both a bit more.

It’s not until they’re sitting at breakfast one morning, all in a bit of a rush to make it to college on time, and Naomi’d gotten up early just to cook for them, so all Emily really wants to do is pull her into the biggest hug in the world and kiss her like there’s no tomorrow, but she settles for a peck on the cheek, and Katie just looks straight at them and rolls her eyes.

“Honestly, Ems, if that’s all the thanks you’re going to give her, I’ll fucking kiss her, because these pancakes are to die for, and I promise I won’t like break or something if you kiss the love of your life.”

As Emily kisses first her sister on the cheek and then Naomi right on those absolutely delicious red lips of hers, she thinks, _Yep!_ _Luckiest girl in the world, me._


	5. Effy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Effy starts to experience emotions.

_The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It’s not that we seize them, but that they seize us._

-Ashley Montagu

She’s not sure why she does it. Maybe it’s just because she can. She always could. She’s been aware of the sway she holds over the male gender since she was about ten, which probably isn’t the best thing in the world in retrospect.

He’s not as into it as he used to be, and maybe the guilt’s finally starting to kick in. You can only screw over your best mate so many times before you’re bound to feel guilty, after all.

Maybe that’s why she does it, too, she thinks as he pulls out gruffly and cleans himself off without even looking at her this time: to actually see the guilt, to see that stepping away isn’t just the best thing for her, but for them, too. JJ always thought it’d be best if she did, but Cook just never seemed to give a shit. Maybe she just wanted to finally have him admit, in a small way, just how full of shit he actually was.

They didn’t love her. None of them did. Not really. She thought Freddie, but then...He loved her the wrong way. Or maybe she just couldn’t love him back the right way. Either way it didn’t matter. It simply hit the point where she couldn’t anymore. She couldn’t deal with them. She couldn’t be his.

She couldn’t be what she never really was, after all.

\--

It’s strange for her to think of what she looks forward to these days.

When she was little it was always the time she spent with Tony that she looked forward to, whether it was tagging along with his friends or just special time with him, having ice cream or, later, listening to him talk while high on spliff, finding it both stupid and endlessly entertaining at the same time.

When she got older she did her best to stop looking forward to anything. Having expectations just led to realising exactly how shit things were when they actually happened.

Somehow, though, she’s actually finding small portions of time, sporadically placed throughout her week, when things don’t feel so shit. Things just kind of are, in those times. Strangely enough she finds herself laughing and smiling more than she ever remembers doing, even if they’re wry smiles and half mocking at times, they feel more genuine than any she’s done in a while.

What’s even stranger is who all of these times happen to be with, given how shittily last year had gone between the two of them.

Katie’s different now, though. Effy knows she hasn’t been completely forgiven, but somehow they just never talk about things like rocks or Freddie and the atmosphere between them stays relatively pleasant.

\--

She hasn’t told Katie that she and Freddie broke up, even. Not outright. But she’s fairly certain that Katie knows, anyway.

Traits like ‘observant’ and ‘perceptive’ and even ‘clever’ aren’t necessarily ones she would have attributed to Katie in the past, but over the past month and a half she’s grown to see just how wrong she used to be.

It’s weird, because their relationship used to be based around Katie talking and Effy observing, but now they both observe and there’s this comfortable silence that almost throws her off. Usually no one can stand the silence but her. Still, when Pandora’s not around and silence descends, neither of them feel the need to talk. _It’s nice,_ she thinks, surprising herself slightly because she’s so rarely thought the words in Katie’s presence until recently, especially not sober (and everyone’s more tolerable when she’s not).

They’ve been hanging out without their Pandora buffer a bit more frequently of late, which Effy can’t help thinking is nice, too.

Maybe it’s simply because Katie is the only person who seems to have no expectations of her.

“Yeah, well, I know better, don’t I?” Katie points out one night when they’re high on spliff (never shrooms) and Effy decides to go ahead and ask. “I mean you hit me in the head with a fucking rock, yeah? And fucked my boyfriend. I’m hardly apt to think you’re a saint now, am I?”

She’s not sure why, but the response makes her smile, and when she glances up to where Katie’s sitting up, leaning back against her headboard, she finds Katie grinning back at her.

It’s the first time either of them has mentioned it without Katie sounding resentful or getting in a huff.

Effy shakes her head and lies back, looking up at her ceiling. It’s the first time ever she thinks that maybe it’s a bit too white, even though Katie’s commented on it at least a half dozen times.

The easy silence returns, only broken by the sloshing of the bottle of vodka they’re passing back and forth.

“I fucked Cook,” Effy finally says, and she doesn’t know why she volunteers that information, especially since she doesn’t ever really offer things up of herself, but Katie just laughs.

“Umm, yeah, babes, I think everyone on the fucking planet knows you’ve fucked Cook.”

“No, I fucked him three weeks ago.”

Effy tilts her head up to gauge Katie’s reaction.

Katie simply raises an eyebrow. “You have fidelity issues, or something?” she finally asks, sounding vaguely amused.

Effy snorts. “Or something. Not really an issue anymore, is it?”

“It’s official, then? So glad I got hit in the head for true love.”

 She looks at Katie sharply, looking for the pain behind the words, the accusation, but there didn’t seem to be one. She sits up and moves in closer, as if trying to see the smallest inflection of something she might be missing, but all she finds is a twinkle in Katie’s eyes that makes her think _stars_.

Suddenly her mouth’s gone dry, and she tries to swallow, but she just can’t manage to produce enough saliva to quite manage it. It’s an odd sensation and not one she’s overly familiar with, unless it’s from drugs or a hangover. Certainly it’s not a sensation she’s ever associated with a person. Not even Freddie.

She has a vague idea of what it probably means, though. It’s a bit...worrying, she decides in the end. Unexpected, definitely.

Not that it’s a girl, necessarily, because she’s never especially cared one way or another about things like that. Love has nothing to do with whether or not someone has a cock, as far as she’s concerned. Lust, either, as far as she can tell.

But it’s Katie.

Katie who is now frowning at her.

“Sorry,” Effy says, “About that, I mean.” She gestures to the faint scar still visible near Katie’s hairline. She’s never actually apologised, she realises. She doesn’t know if it would have made a difference before now, anyway. Probably not, but maybe it’s good to say it, especially now that she actually means it.

Katie raises an eyebrow, and Effy’s sure that some snarky comment is headed her way, but after a moment Katie just nods and takes another swig of vodka.

“We really need some mixers for this shit,” she tells her, making a face as the cheap alcohol burns down her throat.

“I’ll get right on that,” Effy rolls her eyes, the moment, whatever it was, passed now. She rolls back onto her back and lies down again, feeling Katie’s eyes on her.

“Well, obviously. Don’t rush or anything,” Katie’s sarcastic voice bites out a moment later.

Effy’s only mildly surprised to find herself smiling again.

\--

Tony comes to visit...fucking finally. It’s not that she wanted to miss him or that she didn’t have other shit going on in her life, obviously, but apparently she has missed him rather a lot because now that he’s standing there in front of her, grinning that grin of his, all she wants to do is throw her arms around his neck and hold him close.

When she does that a moment later, it feels like a weight she didn’t know she’d been carrying is lifted off of her shoulders.

He pokes and prods her for information, compelling her to talk like nobody else ever manages. Then again, he always just read her so much better than anyone else, so half of her responses don’t have to be verbal for him to understand them.

It’s nice and it’s comfortable, and it’s everything that she missed about her big brother.

That is until he says, “So, Katie, then...Is she hot?”

And then she remembers that her brother can be twat, too.

\--

She should really have expected the sparks that occur when they meet. Katie likes attractive and often older guys, and her brother fills both categories, plus he’s got the whole “rather charming” thing going for him. And her brother, well, he’s always taken an interest in just about anything hot in a skirt, which Katie definitely is.

She supposes that she’s not overly surprised at the flirting that immediately ensues. It’s what the flirting provokes within her that she finds both surprising and disturbing.

Jealousy, until now, has mainly been something that happens to other people and can be rather amusing to toy with on occasion. It is now, however, an emotion that’s twisting in her gut in an unpleasant manner.

She’s not entirely sure if she’s jealous that her brother is hitting on Katie, or if she’s simply jealous that Katie appears to be on the verge of monopolising what little time she has with Tony.

She’s not sure, that is, until Tony reaches out to stroke a piece of hair back from Katie’s face, murmuring something low that she can’t quite hear that coaxes a giggle from Katie’s chest and a blush from her cheeks, and she’s suddenly struck by a wave of nausea.

\--

“You’re brother’s well fit. I see why all the girls were so fussed over him before,” Katie informs her, gazing off into the living room where Tony’s sitting around with Anthea, telling entertaining tales from uni.

It’s the first time Effy’s heard her mum laugh in months.

“Yeah. Fit. That’s Tony,” she replies in a flat voice.

Katie pauses for a second and studies her, so she takes the opportunity to grab the glasses from the cupboard that they came into the kitchen for to begin with (even though she’s sure that Katie only really came in here to talk to her about Tony).

“Right, I suppose you don’t really think about your own brother in terms of hotness,” Katie comments a moment later. “I mean, it’d be a bit weird if you did. Like I could never think of James as hot,” she continues with a shudder.

Effy smiles briefly, recalling meeting Katie’s little brother. He was quite a little perv in training. She could see him growing into Cook in a few years.

Her smile vanishes quickly, though, as the underlying tone of what Katie said sinks in, and she realises that Katie sounded...off. There’s an awkward silence lingering between them now.

“Can you get some ice out of the freezer?” Effy asks, rather than reply.

“Yeah, sure,” Katie replies, moving around the kitchen easily, familiarly.

It reminds Effy that she’s been spending rather a lot of time here of late. Maybe that should stop.

\--

She knows why Katie prefers her house to Emily and Naomi’s. All she has to do is mention the two love birds to see the effect they have on Katie. She’s jealous of them, but happy for them, too, and the contradiction is something she seems to be struggling with a lot.

Effy also suspects that Katie thinks it’s not something she’ll ever have: that one true love, a soul mate. It’s something they have in common. Effy’s sure she’ll never have that either.

Katie, though, is probably wrong. Effy can’t see her ending up alone, at least.

\--

Her suspicions are confirmed when Katie shows up at her house in tears one day, mascara streaming down her face. Tony’s out with Maxxie and Anwar, who are home visiting family as well, and her mum’s at the shops, so it’s her arms that Katie falls into when the door swings open.

Effy stands there in her front hall for a minute, awkwardly patting Katie on the back. She’s never been great at the consoling thing, and people crying always make her a bit uncomfortable. On top of all of that, the physical contact is making her heart flutter in an altogether annoying and inappropriate way.

She eventually decides to lead the still sobbing Katie to her bedroom, opting against the living room or the kitchen in case anyone comes home. She’s not sure about Katie, but she knows that when she’s upset, she wants to be alone, as far away from as many people as possible.

She sits Katie carefully on her bed, then takes a seat next to her, looking around at just about anything besides Katie. It’s the only time she hates to watch, hates to observe: when people are crying.

Katie sniffles and rubs angrily at the tears trickling down her cheeks. “Sorry. I...Fuck! I fucking hate crying!” she says, sounding rather annoyed with herself.

Effy can relate. It’s why she does her best not to, especially in front of other people. It’s that fact that has her wondering what exactly Katie’s doing at her house. She doesn’t ask, though. She’s found that people are often more likely to answer questions she never asks. She simply nodes slightly and sneaks a quick glance up at Katie’s face, only to find that she’s made a bad mascara situation significantly worse. It’d be comical if Katie didn’t look so completely distraught.

“Hold on,” she says, standing and walking quickly to the loo, grabbing a spare roll of toilet paper, then bringing it back and offering it to Katie with a muttered, “Sorry, no tissues.”

“Thanks,” Katie sniffles, sounding a little better.

 _Perhaps she just needed a minute to compose herself,_ Effy thinks.

Katie rips off some toilet paper and begins to clean up her face. When she pulls the toilet paper away and sees the telltale dark makeup stains on it, she sighs heavily. “I must look a right fucking mess.”

“You’re not quite on top Katie Fitch form,” Effy agrees with a slight smile.

This prompts a small smile to form on Katie’s lips for a few seconds as well. “Cunt,” she mutters in a tone that conveys more amusement than malice.

Effy can’t help but grin a little wider.

She gives Katie time to clean herself up further, watching as Katie gets up and crosses to her mirror, dabbing purposefully around slightly bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes, trying to salvage what’s left of her makeup. _She really does have beautifully shaped eyes,_ she notices as she watches.

When Katie’s about done, she catches Effy’s eyes in the mirror and Effy freezes, just for a split second. She often observes people, though, so rationally she knows that Katie won’t jump to any sort of conclusion just because she was watching her.

“Sorry to just fucking show up like this,” Katie says, turning around slowly and looking rather sheepish.

 _How cute,_ Effy thinks about the expression on Katie’s face, but without a hint of the scorn or sarcasm that would make thinking that okay. She doesn’t find people cute. Even Emily and Naomi, who are, granted, ridiculously adorable together, she can’t help finding rather nauseating in their happiness.

“It’s just Ems fucking doesn’t know when not to push things sometimes,” Katie begins her explanation.

 _Because you’re never guilty of that?_ Effy thinks, but refrains from voicing because it definitely won’t help the situation.

“She doesn’t fucking get that not everyone’s like all blissfully loved up and shit. Not everyone’s destined for that perfect love that you can’t seem to live without for even a second. Some of us will never get to have that and she just doesn’t understand that because she’s fucking found it at sixteen!” Katie continues, flopping back down on the bed dejectedly. “Anyway, I couldn’t stand being in that house another minute, and, much as I love Pandora, she’s just too fucking optimistic and cheery sometimes, and she’d just try to lie to me and tell me everyone has a soul mate out there or some other shite she probably thinks is true, and I just can’t handle that right now. And, well, I didn’t exactly want to be out in public like this. I didn’t know where else to go.”

Effy nods. She knows exactly what Katie means. She thinks for a second, trying to imagine the Katie that she knew last year saying all of that, but she just can’t picture it. She remembers Katie’s comment from that stupid class trip to the beach about how she’s what’s changed.

 _How true,_ she muses.

That change seems to have given them more in common than Effy could’ve thought.

“Don’t think you’re going to find the love of your life in Bristol at seventeen, then?”

“Or anywhere, ever,” Katie mutters, staring dejectedly to where she’s picking at her cuticles in her lap.

“What about Tony?” Effy ventures after a minute.

She doesn’t want the answer to be yes. If it is, then she’d honestly rather not know. Still, she feels like she should ask. She’s fairly certain it’s not love for Tony. Not yet, anyway. Tony’s never been great at monogamy as a whole, although he’s grown up some at uni. She knows that he definitely does like her, though. She’s not entirely sure how Katie views their relationship.

Katie scoffs and raises a sceptical eyebrow at Effy. “He doesn’t love me.”

Effy ignores the pitter-patter as her heart skips a beat. “He might,” she says instead, making sure her voice stays neutral.

Katie frowns, then shakes her head. “Even if he does, he won’t if he finds out. No one will.”

She says it so softly that Effy finds herself scooting closer to hear better. Her curiosity is peaked. “Finds out what?” she prods softly a moment later when Katie’s failed to elaborate further.

Katie fiddles with her fingers for another minute, apparently contemplating how much to reveal. She looks away sharply, but not quite quickly enough because Effy catches the way she’s now biting back tears again.

Instinctively, Effy reaches out and covers Katie’s hand with her own.

 Katie glances back at their hands as if surprised at the gesture, then she takes a deep shaky breath. “I can’t have kids.”

Effy furrows her brows. A few questions immediately swirl through her mind like ‘Why not?’ and ‘Why should that matter to Tony?’, but she stays silent, simply giving Katie’s hand a little squeeze.

It’s another moment before Katie continues, and when she does her voice cracks with emotion. “The doctors told me I’m going through premature menopause. I always wanted to be so fucking grown up. Guess I got my fucking wish,” she comments dryly, but she punctuates it with a sniffle, and Effy doesn’t have to be half as perceptive as she is to sense the pain behind the statement.

“I feel betrayed by own fucking body. By myself! I mean who’s ever going to want me now I’m damaged goods? Let’s face it, I’m not exactly going to win any personality competitions now, am I? I’m a bitch, I know it. All I’ve got is looks, but I don’t just want to be some wanker’s fucking trophy wife. I’m better than that. I think I am, at least. I don’t fucking know who I am anymore.”

Katie’s wrong on so many points that Effy isn’t sure where to start. Okay, so she is a bitch, but she’s also got a wicked sense of humour sometimes and quite a sharp wit. She has an actual brain, much as she pretends she doesn’t.

 _She’s no more damaged goods than I am,_ she thinks.

As Effy watches Katie start absently tugging on a thread on her duvet with her free hand, she sees it for the first time: just how much Katie Fitch has in her to give, how much love she has to share buried deep inside her, and how badly she wants to find the person to share it with, even if she doesn’t think they exist.  

Without thinking, Effy takes her hand from Katie’s and brings it up to brush some hair behind her ear, then strokes it softly down Katie’s cheek. “You’re Katie fucking Fitch,” she murmurs softly.

Katie finally turns to face her fully for the first time since she’s arrived, brows knitted in confusion.

In an act of pure stupidity and impulse, Effy leans forward and presses her lips to Katie’s. As soon as their lips meet, she remembers all of the reasons she shouldn’t, first and foremost of which is the way something so chaste and basic unexpectedly makes her stomach drop and her lips tingle and sends little electric shivers of excitement burning through her whole body like fire, in a way that no kiss ever has before. The second of which is that Katie’s dating her brother.

Still, she can’t quite convince herself to pull away for a few seconds, and once she has, she’s too stunned to say anything. She waits, instead, for the slap she’s sure is coming, along with Katie’s fervent assertion that she’s not the gay twin.

Neither comes.

The room is silent, save an old alarm clock, ticking away the awkward seconds, and Effy counts out eighty-six ticks before Katie lets out a sharp burst of laughter.

“Well, that’s well fucked up,” she says, shaking her head and still laughing a bit, although Effy thinks there’s a slightly manic element to it.

She can only nod. “Yeah, a bit,” she agrees. _Or a lot,_ she thinks, although what makes it a lot fucked up is the way it makes her feel, which Katie definitely doesn’t need to know.

Katie’s laughter stops and they both just look at each other for a moment. It’s Effy who starts to laugh first, then, and Katie starts up again until they’ve both collapsed back onto the bed, writhing and gasping for breath as their stomachs start to ache from laughing so hard.

When they’ve finally regained their composure and caught their breath, Katie sighs heavily and turns her head to the side to look at Effy.

 _The curve of her face is beautiful_ , Effy can’t stop herself from thinking. She finds herself wanting to tell Katie that she’s wrong about so much that she said before, but the moment to do that’s passed, and she suspects that Katie might be starting to figure that out anyway.

“Mind if I just hang out here a while?” Katie asks.

Effy shakes her head, then reaches lazily to her bedside table and pulls open the drawer to grab a pre-rolled spliff without even bothering to sit up. She locates the spliff and a lighter by touch alone, and then lights up, inhaling deeply and holding in the breath until it starts to burn before letting it out. She offers the spliff to Katie who takes it with a grateful smile.

“You should tell him. Tony, I mean,” she voices a minute later. She’s not sure if she wants Tony to react like the wanker he can be and freak out, or like the good guy she knows he is and be supportive.

Katie simply shrugs. “Maybe,” she agrees with a slight inclination of her head.

She wants to say, ‘It doesn’t matter to me,’ but she knows she can’t. _The thing is,_ she thinks as the drugs start to kick in, _what’s important to me isn’t necessarily important to others._

She ignores the thought that pops unbidden into her mind a moment later that suggests that maybe that’s the kind of person Katie needs.

Love is for other people, after all.

\--

She’s aware that Tony’s been watching her a little more closely the past few weeks, and it’s starting to vaguely annoy her. She much prefers doing the scrutinising to being scrutinised.

“It wasn’t just a stupid kiss, was it?” Tony finally corners her in the kitchen one day.

She knows exactly what he means, but she feigns innocence anyway. “What?” She masks her surprise that Katie told him about it to begin with.

He grins his annoying little knowing grin at her and shakes his head. “You don’t fool me, Effy Stonem,” he says, leaning in close. “You fancy my girlfriend.”

She rolls her eyes and does her best to look annoyed, but it’s an act and she knows he sees through it. He always does.

His grin widens. “Well, at least you’ve got good taste in women.”

She pours her cup of tea, ignoring that it hasn’t steeped long enough, just wanting to get out of this room and away from this conversation. “I’ve got things to do, Tony.”

Tony smiles smugly, but steps aside to let her past.

She’s at the bottom of the stairs and about to breathe a sigh of relief when he calls, “I think she enjoyed it, you know,” after her.

Love is definitely for other people, she reminds her heart when it skips a beat.

Besides, Tony’s just fucking with her, obviously.

\--

She pretends to take it in stride, but she’s genuinely pleased (and surprised) when they break up a few days later.

Tony’s cryptic explanation of, “It was a mutual decision,” annoys her more than she lets on.

Katie’s no more helpful with her, “There was no real reason, it just seemed the right time.”

Of course there was a reason. There’s always a fucking reason, even if it’s not always a good one. Effy’s not used to being left in the dark, and the fact that she feels like they’re actively trying to keep her there peeves her.

As a result, she’s shorter with both of them than she means to be, until Katie finally snaps back one day with , “Fuck! If I wanted bitchiness, I’d just fucking stay home with Naomi and her perpetual PMT!” and storms out.

Tony appears beside her mere minutes after the door slams shut behind Katie, while she’s still contemplating the merits of going after Katie and apologising, or just giving her time to cool off. He must read the conflict on her face because he shakes his head and says, “It must be love.”

“I don’t believe in love,” Effy counters automatically in a flat tone of voice.

Tony smirks in a way that lets Effy know that he doesn’t believe her for a second, before responding with, “Well, whatever it is, it’s probably not as one sided as you think.”

The words freeze her in place, even though he must be joking. “Fuck off,” she eventually manages to mutter in his direction.

He shrugs and kisses her on the cheek. “You’ve got a lot of love to give, Effy Stonem. Don’t you dare write love off yet,” he whispers in her ear before disappearing out of the room again.

Her first thought is that he’s lying. Or wrong, at the very least.

Her second thought, the one that bothers her and keeps her up all that night, despite the half a bottle of vodka she’s downed, is that she hopes he’s not.

Maybe, deep down, she wants that love to be something she can have, too. 


	6. JJ

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JJ wants things fixed.

_Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose._

-Tennessee Williams

 

 

He doesn't understand it. Effy's gone now, so Freddie and Cook and him should be friends again. Like they were before. For some reason, they're not. He doesn't understand it. If it was an equation it'd be solved by now. That's why he likes maths. It always makes sense. Four minus one is three. The three musketeers.

He wishes that life could be like school: straight-forward, rigid, structured, where people learn from history in an attempt to not be doomed to repeat it. Real life is nothing like school, though, and school’s over, done, finished, ended.

Just results left.  

Things have to be set right before results come back, before they all go away. They have to be friends again. Best friends.

They just have to.

\--

“Get a job. Something to focus on. It will be good for you.”

So his mother claims, at least. Just because his mind is good for repetitive tasks like those usually offered in those menial positions available to boys of his age in various shops and companies, does not mean that he especially wants to do such things. Besides, it’s not like he excels at interviews. Personal relationships are hardly his strong suit.

“It’ll be fine! You did wonderfully at your university interviews. They all thought you were so clever,” his mother encourages.

 _Yes, Mum, because they were academics related and all they seem to care about is how many big words you use._ _Besides, you helped me prepare for them for two months beforehand._ He doesn’t voice this. Instead, he puts on a smile that he knows will make her happy. He can tell how excited she gets when she thinks he’s making progress and he doesn’t want to let her down.

It will at least give him somewhere to go between now and when he gets his results and then goes off to university (conditional acceptance to Oxford, and he’s fairly certain he got the A he needs in History). It will get him out of his house where his father barely looks up from his newspaper and his mother hovers, suggesting that he phone either Freddie or Cook (although usually Freddie because, although she’s tried very hard not to show it, JJ knows that she’s never truly approved of Cook). He doesn’t want to phone them, though. Not while they’re like this. No. What he wants to do is lock them both in a room together until they sort things out once and for all so that they can just go back to being best friends.

\--

Job interview number one: failed.

\--

He runs into Freddie when he’s on the way back from the shops with his mum one day, and she not-so-subtly hints that he should go spend some time with his friend. He can’t blame her, really. Subtlety is often lost on him.

Freddie’s high, he can tell, and he can’t help feeling angry at Freddie’s apparent constant need for intoxication on one substance or another. It’s an issue that Cook suffers from as well, and it’s one that JJ’s never understood.

He _has_ to take drugs, and he hates them. He wishes he didn’t have to take any. Meanwhile Freddie and Cook can’t seem to go a day without wanting to put potentially dangerous chemicals in their bodies.

They walk in an uncomfortable silence that has JJ constantly opening and shutting his mouth in the vain hope that something will come out that will make everything all right. He’s aware that the social regulations that govern society suggest that he make a general statement of lament regarding a break up, but he’s not sorry that Freddie and Effy aren’t together anymore, not at all, so he’s not about to lie about it.

He’s sorry that Effy encountered their tight little group at all and got between them.

“So how’s life going?” Freddie finally volunteers.

 _You don’t care,_ JJ thinks, but he replies with a curt, “Fine. Yours?”

Freddie shrugs. “Getting better.”

It’s not the answer that JJ expects. He’d expected something along the lines of “Shit without Effy.” It’s enough to make him stop in his tracks to process it for a second. (He’s never been very good at processing complex social or emotional occurrences while doing anything else. He’s sure it’s related to the fact that he’s male and studies have shown that males cannot multi-task, although he reckons that that’s not entirely true because he can do complex maths and do jumping jacks at the same time.)

“You all right, Jay?” Freddie asks.

That gives him pause, too, because he can’t remember the last time Freddie wasn’t too wrapped up in his own problems to bother asking.

His mind’s starting to feel like it’s on fire, racing around with more questions being added to the ridiculous swirling mass of them every millisecond, if not faster. They’re starting to overwhelm him. He can feel it coming, the loss of control. He always can, but he can so rarely stop it actually happening. _Deep breaths,_ he reminds himself of one of the ‘techniques’ that one of the slightly more helpful ignorant doctors suggested to him. In this instance, fortunately, it seems to work.

“If things are getting better then why aren’t you and Cook friends again?” JJ demands as soon as his mind’s settled enough to pick one question and actually voice it. “Why aren’t we all friends again?”

“Jay, mate, we were always friends,” Freddie replies in a soothing tone.

“No. No, we weren’t. You’ve barely seen me in months. You don’t know what’s going on in my life or how my exams went or even where I’m planning on going to university!”

Freddie looks momentarily taken aback, and JJ’s sure that he’s going to try to argue the point, but then his shoulders slump, and then he nodded.

“I suppose you’re right. Sorry.”

JJ’s a bit floored again, but this is the first apology he’s gotten with regards to all of this, and he can’t help but feel vindicated for the resentment he’s been carrying around.

“So let’s hang out. You can catch me up on the life of Jonah Jeremiah Jones,” Freddie grins, throwing an arm around him.

Just like that, things start to feel like they’re beginning to be repaired.

\--

Job interview number two: failed.

\--

He’s happy that he now finally feels like he and Freddie are friends again. Proper friends. Friends that take an actual interest in each other’s lives and care about each other.

The problem is that he doesn’t feel like he can mention Effy around him. Not much, at least. And definitely no mentions of Cook.

He’d like to, though. He’d like to find out what exactly is still keeping the three of them from being friends the way they used to. Maybe, he thinks, Freddie and Cook just need to ask for things the way that Emily finally got him to ask for things. Maybe that would help.

He suggests that to Emily one day. He’s over there to ask advice about job interviews really, but the three musketeers thing is weighing on his mind more than why it’s probably not a good idea to list his I.Q. as one of his strong points for a menial labour job because it’s a rather intimidating number.

“Are you kidding? They both fucked the other’s girl, and it was the same fucking girl,” Katie announces, flopping down on the couch, apparently having overheard.

“I know that Freddie wanted Effy and Effy really should have just stayed away, but he didn’t have any actual claim to her when she was with Cook, so I really think that they should just forgive-“

“He had a claim on her this time when she fucked Cook,” Katie interrupts. “Besides, where emotions are involved things are never that straight-forward.”

“This time?”

“Like a month ago or something I think. No, wait, it was before exams, I’m pretty sure. Before Tony came home anyway.” Katie waves her hand as if it’s not really all that important, but it is, JJ’s sure.

He’s vaguely aware of Emily asking Katie about since when does she know all the goings on in Effy’s life, but that’s not important to him at all.

He doesn’t think Freddie knows about this particular moment of infidelity, but, then again, he’s not sure it would make that much of a difference either. Effy didn’t leave Freddie for Cook this time. She didn’t seem to leave him for anyone. She’s just not with him. That should be what matters.

Katie makes him a bit nervous, especially because she has really nice breasts that she doesn’t seem to have any sort of a problem putting on display, so he normally avoids any direct interactions with her, especially ones that lead to further interaction and could potentially anger her, but there’s something he feels he needs to know. Maybe if he could just understand it, then he’d know better how to help Freddie and Cook fix things. “What made you forgive Effy?”

Katie frowns for a moment, then shrugged. “People change and life’s too short.”

It’s not a very helpful answer, as far as he can tell, but he nods anyway. _The problem is_ , he thinks, _that I’m just not sure that Cook and Freddie_ have _changed_.

“Jay, we should get back to the interview stuff. You’ve got another one tomorrow remember,” Emily says pointedly, smiling kindly, but glancing into the kitchen to where he knows Naomi’s cooking tea for them.

“Interview?” Katie perks up. “Interviews are all about clothes. Here, I’ll help!”

He represses a groan and nods. Suddenly coming here seems like a bad idea.

\--

Job interview number three: failed.

\--

Cook shakes his head. “That bridge is burned, mate. It’s not going to happen.”

“But why?” JJ presses. “Neither of you are with her now!”

“Damage has been done. Can’t be helped,” Cook says.

It’s rather damn infuriating. “It can be helped! You just have to try! Why don’t you just try? For me! For Freddie!”

He’s sure that Cook’s about to laugh or blow it off, or do any of the numerous annoying and unhelpful things that he always does whenever JJ has an outburst like that, but for the second time in less than a week an old friend surprises him.

Cook shrugs and nods. “Yeah, all right. Why not, right? We’re all heading our separate ways soon enough anyway. Where’s the harm in fucking trying, right Jaykins?” Cook asks, reaching out to ruffle his hair.

“Can you not ruffle my hair, please?” JJ decides to request while things appear to be going his way.

Cook does let out a small laugh then, but complies. “Whatever you say, JJ.”

In his head he can see the rift between the three of them being mended even more. He tallies himself two wins. One more hurdle to overcome.

\--

Job interview number four: hired.

It’s thanks in part to Thomas, he knows. Thomas spoke up for him when he walked into the green grocer’s, mentioned that he was a friend and very reliable, and from there the interview had gone swimmingly. It wasn’t like he had to be a genius to stock shelves anyway.

The look on his mum’s face when he’d told her he was hired made all the hassle worthwhile. He may not be the best at reading facial expressions, but he knows what that look means. It means that she’s proud of him and happy for him.

Truth is: he’s pretty happy for himself too.

Things, he feels, are finally starting to look up.

Besides, there was also that girl. The one with the pretty blonde hair pulled back into a messy ponytail with the cute little dimples who he was quite, definitely sure had smiled at him.

The one whom he’s now going to be working with.

The one with the surprisingly arousing, husky voice who’d said, “Welcome to the team,” in a tone of voice he was sure was just as friendly as it was sarcastic.

Besides, she’d winked, hadn’t she? He’s 98.5% sure that she winked. At him, to be specific.

Yes, there’s certainly a decent probability of things getting better very soon. At least, for once, he feels like people besides him are trying for things to improve. That has to count for something. 


	7. Thomas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas tries to get back to his roots.

_I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be._

_­_ -Douglas Adams

 

 

School, work, the club, and his family. That is his mantra. That is how he survived the year. It is how he got over Pandora.

Now, though, there is no school, and hard as he tries he cannot shake the feeling that he needs more in his life. He needs something more fulfilling.

He loves his club nights still, but it is for the music only. The culture, this foreign, engulfing, overwhelming, and most importantly corrupting English culture that he fell into does not appeal to him in the slightest anymore. He has seen the damage that it causes.

He sometimes wonders if maybe his mother did not have the right idea all along when she first sent him back to Congo.

Here at least he is useful, though. He makes money to pay for Daniel’s medications. He has even managed to save enough so that they can move to a better apartment. One that is not so damp and has no mould growing in the bathroom, creeping across the ceiling like the sands from the Sahara creep out of the desert to coat more of Africa during Harmaton. One that means that Daniel gets sick less frequently.

His mother suggests to him that church is the answer. Maybe she is right.

“Viens avec moi. Et tes frères!” she pleads.

 _Come with me._ _And your siblings,_ he translates automatically. He got in the habit when he first moved here and had to translate his own thoughts all the time before he voiced them.

She says it will bring him back to his roots. That it is other Congolese people who go there. It has the good music, the right music, the Lord’s music. She does not approve of the hip hop he listens to or the raps he spins.

“S’il-tu-plait, mon enfant,” she requests.

 _Please, my child,_ he thinks.

What can it hurt?

\--

The first thing that strikes him is the music. His mother is right. This is the good music. Not necessarily because it is the Lord’s music, but because of the rhythms. There are no rhythms like this in music in this country. Sure there are links in hip hop and rap, but there is nothing as pure as this. It makes him want to move his feet and dance as soon as he enters the church. It brings a smile to his face as true as the one he gets when Fumi draws him a picture, or when Daniel is healthy enough to run and play with him outside.

It takes him back to days spent out in the hot sun, singing songs as he helped his uncle with his goats. It takes him back to days during the rainy season when he would sit inside with his siblings and play the drums while they all sang together.

If he closes his eyes he can practically smell alloco and grilled fish cooking and hear his cousins playing with the dogs and feel the hot African sun beating down on his skin.

When he opens his eyes, that is when he first sees her, smiling so brightly that she could be the sun he was just feeling, singing in the choir, moving her hips from side to side as only an African girl can, clapping with feeling to the beats of the music.

 _She is beautiful,_ he thinks.

It takes a nudge from Fumi before he realises that he has stopped moving and is simply staring.

She has caught him staring, he realises, when she smiles right at him. He has to smile back.

He shuffles along to his seat beside his mother, already feeling lighter and happier.

Church, he decides, was definitely a good idea.

\--

Father Babajide has a firm handshake and a friendly smile. He welcomes him warmly with only the slightest hint of reprimand for him not coming sooner. Fumi and Daniel have already run off to play with their friends, leaving Thomas standing beside his mother.

It is a sea of African faces that surrounds him, French flowing fluently around him with familiar slang and accents that warm his heart. Still, he finds himself feeling a little lost, because although this feels like home, he has grown so accustomed to the English world he lives in that this feels almost foreign.

Foreign, that is, until Father Babajide says, “Meet my daughter, Andrea. I believe she is in your year at Roundview,” and his eyes meet beautiful dark eyes and the same stunning smile that had greeted him from the choir.

“Hello, it is nice to meet you,” he grins, holding out his hand.

“Nice to meet you, too,” she replies, and her speaking voice, as her singing voice, sounds like angels calling to him straight from heaven.

Her accent, he notes, unlike her father’s, is completely British, not a trace of her Congolese roots shining through in it. It is the first time that he thinks that it takes nothing from the beauty of her voice. (Unlike for Fumi with whom he can already hear her Congolese accent slipping away to be replaced by the harsher British sounds.)

 _She must have lived here a long while,_ he thinks.

“You have a beautiful voice,” he says.

She smiles shyly. “Thank you,” she responds softly.

“She has always sung so beautifully. Voice like an angel, I always said. Ever since she was little. Takes after her mother like that,” Father Babajide boasts proudly, looking to his daughter with obvious affection.

“Thank the good Lord that she is a part of our choir. She brings so much youthful energy to God’s music,” Thomas’s mother interjects.

“Thank you, Mrs. Tomone,” Andrea replies politely, flashing friendly eyes in Thomas’s direction. “Perhaps you will help me with the Sunday school next week, Thomas?”

He easily nods his consent. “I would love to.”

Father Babajide proclaims it a brilliant idea, but Thomas is more concerned with the realisation that he has been smiling nonstop for the better part of two hours at this point. He can’t remember the last time he smiled so much.

\--

He gets a promotion and a raise at work. He’s named Assistant Manager. His mother is so proud, and the extra money means that perhaps he will be able to take the spot he was offered at Bristol University. He didn’t bother applying anywhere further away. He can’t leave his family. They need him.

They like him at work. They say he has a natural way with the customers. He simply treats the customers as he would like to be treated if he was in a store.

They say he has a good work ethic. He just shows up a few minutes early to be sure that he is not late, and does not leave until all of his work is done and the store is tidy.

He likes that JJ works with him now. It is nice to have a friend at work, and JJ is the one of his friends who, in his own way, seems the most innocent. He at least seems to wish to avoid trouble and pain. He tries to help his friends repair their relationships rather than destroy them, at least.

He wishes that he had taken more time to get to know JJ better over the past two years, but working with him at least gives him a bit of a chance before it is too late. Of course, JJ will be going off soon to university, and Thomas has no doubt that a boy as smart as JJ will get the results he needs to go to Oxford University, which he knows is a very good school.

JJ is the first person he tells about his promotion, and he’s pleased to see that JJ is genuinely happy for him about it.

He is happy for JJ, too, because he sees the way that he and Lara look at each other as they stock shelves together. He can sense the blossoming romance. He thinks it is something they both need.

Lara, he knows from working with her himself, can be a bit sarcastic and cynical, but he believes that she is hoping for someone to prove her wrong about her particular negative view of the world, and Thomas thinks that JJ could be just that person.

 _Perhaps,_ he thinks as he watches JJ begin to stutter and spill the packages of chocolate that he is meant to be putting on shelves all over the floor while Lara giggles, _he needs a push in the right direction._

He asks JJ to hang out after work that night, and JJ agrees readily. Thomas can tell that JJ is eager to have friends who value him, and Thomas is happy to be able to be one of those friends.

“You know, JJ, I think that Lara might like you,” Thomas eases into the conversation when he feels it is appropriate.

“R-r-really? A-a-are you s-s-sure?” JJ stutters, and Thomas grins because this is proof that he is right about JJ’s feelings for Lara at least.

“I believe so,” Thomas confirms. “I think perhaps you should ask her out.”

JJ shakes his head vehemently. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Statistically speaking, girls don’t like me once they find out about my problems. Girls in general don’t like dating freaks.”

“You are not a freak, JJ. You are an individual. It is our differences that make us great,” Thomas argues. “I believe that Lara is a girl who can appreciate differences.”

JJ frowns, and Thomas thinks that he is going to disagree again, so he adds, “Besides, I have seen the way she smiles at you.”

At that, JJ grins sheepishly. “She does smile at me,” he agrees.

“Exactly. You should try to talk to her more, at least,” Thomas suggests.

“Y-y-yeah. Okay.”

Thomas smiles to himself. JJ is a good person. He deserves some happiness.

\--

Andrea is proud of him about his promotion, too. She is so pleased, in fact, that she gives him a big kiss. It catches him off guard at first, but he soon gets lost in the softness of her lips and the sweetness of her tongue.

It is the first of many kisses, he is happy to find out. She kisses like no one he has ever met before. Each time he feels like it sets his very soul ablaze.

More than that he finds that he can talk to her about everything and nothing at the same time. She in turn seems to simply enjoy being in his presence, spending time with him. She likes his family, too, respecting his mother, and playing with his brother and sister. Fumi has already taken to her like a sister, and Thomas can only smile broadly when he comes back from helping his mother unload groceries in the kitchen to find Andrea and Fumi looking through a magazine together and talking about makeup.

 _Andrea fits so well into my life_ , he thinks.

\--

It is strange, he cannot help but marvel, how Katie and Effy seem so close these days. He is glad that they have learned to forgive each other. He is happy, too, for Pandora, in that they both seem to be true friends to her these days.

He meets them shopping one day, for a party, Effy explains. Pandora smiles at him, and he remembers, for a minute why he loved her. She was open and innocent and beautiful. She is still two of those things, but he could not forgive her her loss of innocence, her cheating. He tried, but he simply could not, and he had to step away to heal his heart. He knows now that they could never have really worked, anyway. They are from different worlds and he would only have missed his if he had stayed with her.

“You can come,” Pandora offers brightly, and he is glad to see her so bright again, so happy.

“It’s for when we get our results,” Katie informs him. “Good or bad we decided celebration was in order.”

He takes in the way that Katie glances to Effy with a smile, and the way that Katie reaches out to wrap her arm through Effy’s, pulling her closer. He notes the way that Effy stiffens, but then a small, genuine smile graces her features for a second, and he sees, for the first time, why the other boys always found her so beautiful. “Thank you,” he replies. “Maybe I will come.”

He knows he probably will not. He and Andrea were planning on celebrating together. They were going to have a big dinner with both of their families.

Pandora smiles at him again, and he returns the smile this time, before Katie loops her free arm through Pandora’s with a muttered, “Come on, the fucking snacks won’t buy themselves,” and starts to pull her away, the three of them offering their goodbyes.

There is no ache in his chest, he notes, as he too sets on his way. There is no longer pain associated with Pandora. He feels whole now, with his family and his church and Andrea. He has what he needs in his life. He thinks that perhaps Pandora has found that as well, when he glances over his shoulder and sees her bouncing excitedly across to a shelf with brownie mixes and Effy and Katie laughing (with her, he can tell, rather than at her).

 _Life is good_ , he thinks as he picks up the milk and eggs that he came for and heads to pay, stopping to get a small box of donuts. _Very good indeed._


	8. Cook

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cook makes an effort.

_Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense._

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

It’s not an overnight fix, by any means. He didn’t expect it to be. In fact, Freddie barely talks to him the first time he goes round, talking mostly to JJ instead.

He’s decided, though, that it’s time for all this fucking bullshit to come to an end. He can be stubborn when he wants. Well, his stubbornness is probably one of the reasons that they’re in this mess to begin with, really, but he’s going to be stubborn about this, too: about fixing them.

JJ seems happy, at least, that he’s trying. And Freds didn’t kick him out of the shed, so that’s something, right?

It’s just time, he feels. Time to bury the fucking hatchet or some shit. He’s tired of the way things have become. Tired of not having his fucking best mates there for him. He’s not an idiot. He knows that one of these days he’s going to get himself in trouble, and when that comes, he’d like to think that Freds’ll have his back just like he used to. He’s better off with Freds around really. JJ, too.

So he’s going to try and he’s going to keep fucking trying until it either kills him or he gets his best friend back.

\--

He tells him about fucking her. Honesty’s the best policy or some shit, right? He should know, anyway, he reckons. Can’t rebuild a friendship on lies.

It earns him a punch in the face, but he doesn’t try to block it or protect himself. He reckons he had it coming, really.

It’s after that outburst, when Freddie starts to cry, sinking to the floor, that he feels things start to shift.

He sits down beside him, not touching him, he’s not positive he’s not going to get another punch if he does that and scrawny as Freds is, he packs quite a punch. Instead he pulls out a fag and lights up, offering it to Freddie after a minute.

Freddie shakes his head, so he shrugs and continues to smoke.

“I don’t think she ever loved us. Either of us. Not really,” Cook finally muses aloud, puffing out a smoke ring as if encapsulating his words.

Freddie sniffs beside him and rubs at his eyes. “I thought I was over her.”

“’Course you’re not, man. She fucking dug her claws in deep, didn’t she? She made you fall, even if she didn’t. She’s got that power. Fucking hopeless we were. You just pushed your feelings down, is all.”

Freds looks at him hard, then, and he braces himself for another hit, but none comes. Instead, Freddie eventually sighs and nods. “Yeah. I suppose you’re right.”

When Freds roots around in the side of the couch and produces a spliff, lighting it up then offering it to him, Cook thinks that maybe they’re not quite as hopeless as he thought they were.

\--

He gets a job with a mate of Uncle Keith’s working on cars. Something honest to keep him out of trouble. Probably not a bad idea, really. He’s got to grow up sometime, after all.

It’s decent money, too. Not so great that he’s going to stop supplementing it with selling a bit of Uncle Keith’s special blend on the side, of course, but not bad.

It’s not like he’s really got uni in his prospects. All that further education bollocks isn’t for him. He’s much happier with grease under his fingernails. He’s not meant for books and lectures and all that academic shite that JJ’s destined for. He’s meant for hard physical work. He’s happier that way.

It’s why he didn’t bother applying anywhere (although he told JJ he did just to get him off his back way back when). It wasn’t like he studied all that hard for his A-levels, so he’s not delusional enough to think he’d have gotten the grades he needed anyway.

So it’s a good, honest day’s work for him. It feels good, nice cut on his arm from where the knife had slipped when he was cutting the fucking seatbelt free when it got tangled notwithstanding. It feels like possibility for the future.

\--

He’s not sure when, exactly, he realised that Effy just isn’t right for any of them, but when he comes across Effy and Katie sitting on a bench by a lake one day, sharing a fag, he doesn’t feel any of that anger that he felt when she chose Freds over him or any of that longing for her. Instead, he finds himself able to put on a grin as he hops over the back of the bench and plops himself down beside them, snagging the fag out of Katie’s fingers.

“Fucking wanker! You could ask, you know,” she mutters, but he just chuckles and inhales deeply, feeling the nicotine wash through him.

He passes the cigarette back and then looks over at them, taking in the look they’re exchanging. It’s like they’re having a conversation without words. _Interesting_ , he thinks. He’s not sure when they became actual friends, but they definitely seem close now.

Katie sighs. “Fine,” she grumbles, and Cook can tell that it’s not directed at him. “Cook, we’re having a party next week. When we get our results. You should, like, come, or something.”

“Party? Why didn’t you fucking say so, Katiekins? Can’t have a party without the Cookie Monster, can you, Eff?” He beams at them.

Effy glances sidelong at him with a wry smile and it very nearly makes something twinge in his chest, but then the feeling passes, and he feels better for it.

“Of course, not,” Effy says, in that enigmatic way of hers that has him unsure if she means it or not.

He shrugs his doubt off, though. It doesn’t matter if she means it. What matters is that he’ll have fun. “I’ll bring Freds and JJ.”

He waits for a reaction from Effy, but it’s Katie, instead, who responds first, looking to Effy for a second before turning what he’s sure is a practised smile on him. “Yeah, sure. Sounds fun. See if you can bring some of Uncle Keith’s special blend, yeah? No fucking ‘shrooms, though.”

This last comment elicits a small bark of the most genuine laughter he’s ever heard out of Effy.

It startles him for a second, but then he smiles. Maybe she’s happier without them the same as they’re happier without her.

He steals the tail end of the fag off of Katie, and sucks it right down before flicking the butt away and standing up. “Right, then, ladies. I’ll be seeing you.”

“Tosser,” Katie calls after him, but he reckons that she sounds almost affectionate.

When he glances over his shoulder (just once, mind) at the two of them, he catches the smile that Katie’s directing at Effy and a wheel starts to turn in his head.

 _But, no,_ he decides. _Couldn’t be._ He’s never met two birds who like cock so much, after all.

\--

By all rights, the party should be more awkward than it is. _But, then,_ he thinks, _maybe both Freds and me are starting to work past this Effy shite._

It’s when they first arrive at Effy’s that things feel off. There’s not enough background noise, for starters, as if everyone’s waiting for some sort of explosion (waiting for _them_ to explode, he thinks) and is holding their breath.

He greets Effy with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then does the same with Katie. Like they’re old friends, he thinks, when he knows that Katie found him rather repulsive for most of the first year he knew her and Effy, well, he and Effy were never really just _friends_.

 _That was half the problem, really,_ he muses. Then, again, maybe it’s not too late for that to happen: genuine friendship. If her relationships with Katie and Panda are anything to judge by, she might be better at being a friend than a girlfriend.

He glances over his shoulder to where Freds is greeting Effy with an awkward hug, and he knows that friendship between all of them just isn’t a possibility yet. Right now, he and Freds need each other.

“Hope yous don’t mind, but little Jaykins here’s got himself a girlfriend, and I said he could bring her along. The more the merrier, right?” he announces.

“Um, yeah, sure,” Katie agrees as she stretches up to give Freds a brief hug.

Cook can’t help wondering over the mechanics of their sex life for a second, given the height difference. His mind conjures up a few mental images that amuse him before he decides that Katie was probably mostly on top. He could see her being quite a tiger in the sack. Dominant, definitely.

“Hello, tosser,” Naomi greets him with a broad grin and a fond tone.

His own grin spreads broadly across his face. _Speaking of tigers in the sack,_ he thinks. “Naomikins!” he bellows. He fucking loves that girl. Best mate he never thought he’d have and probably doesn’t deserve. Her and little Red. He’d never tell Katie this, for fear that she’d rip off his balls, but Naomi and Emily are his favourites, hands down. Emily’s the nice twin, sure, but it’s the hidden cheekiness that he knows she’s got that he loves. “Emilio!” he adds, catching sight of her, predictably just beside her girl. _Best relationship in the world,_ he acknowledges. He wraps an arm tightly around both of them and leans back in an attempt to lift them both off their feet at once. It fails and results in him simply pulling their shirts up a bit, but he’s not about to complain about _that_.

It’s been too long since he’s spent some quality time with them. He needs to fix that before they disappear off to wherever it is they’re going. He doesn’t know where that is, but he knows it’s places. Those two are destined for greatness, he can tell.

There’s another moment of awkwardness when Thomas arrives not five minutes after them. In all honesty, Cook’s surprised to see him. Still, he reckons that in a different world he and Thommo could’ve been friends, so no harm in being friendly. Especially when it turns out he’s brought that fit bird Cook’s seen singing in the music room at school.

A quick glance at Pandapops, and Cook can see that he and Freds aren’t the only people who’ve come a long way this year.

\--

He’s not fussed about his grades, but apparently everyone else believes it’s a big deal, so he goes along with the general sharing.

“A, B, B,” Emily kicks things off proudly to a pattering of applause.

“Three B’s,” Katie announces rather smugly next, and Cook’s not surprised in the slightest. He always knew there were more brains to Katie than met the eye.

His eyes flit to Effy, who’s next in line, but she’s looking at Katie with a genuine smile and something akin to pride. Again he starts to wonder. There’s something, he’s almost sure now.

Katie looks expectantly to Effy when the applause dies down, and Effy suddenly resumes her cool, calm exterior and stands to volunteer, “A, B, C.”

“D, E, F, G,” Cook continues with a laugh before JJ frowns at him. Naomi and Freds chuckle, though, and that makes him happy.

He catches a muttered, “Good job, babes,” from Katie, and he’d almost swear that there’s a faint blush on Effy’s cheeks afterwards, except for she’s Effy fucking Stonem and he’s damn sure she doesn’t know how to fucking blush.

Panda stands hesitantly, then. “A, A, B,” she informs them.

There’s a moment where nobody says anything at all. Effy’s house is dead quiet. He can understand it, too. He’s fucking in awe. Pandapops? Really? A, A, B?

“Guess all that studying we did paid off,” Katie finally says, before standing and throwing her arms around Pandora. “Congrats, babes!”

Effy’s hugging Pandora in a second and Cook starts up a whooping cheer, because fucking hell, that girl fucking deserves it. “Fucking ace, Pandapops!” he adds.

Pandora looks virtually ecstatic as she takes her seat with Katie and Effy looking on proudly. He’s glad she’s got friends like that now, because he remembers back when he was nailing her, thinking that she seemed rather lonely a lot of the time.

“Three A’s,” JJ goes next, and nobody seems even remotely surprised, but they all clap and congratulate him anyway.

Cook and Freddie, though, exchange a look, because they can remember a time when JJ was so fucking ridiculously awkward in school that his grades suffered for it. It’s part of what the three of them have, together, part of what they almost fucking lost: all that history. JJ’s come a long fucking way. They all have, really.

Lara’s a year younger than them so has nothing to contribute other than a kiss for JJ, making the boy blush so red that Cook contemplates for a second that his head might burst.

Freds stands next and offers his “B, C, C.”

If he hadn’t been stoned and heartbroken for half his study time, Cook reckons he’d have done better.

“C, C, D,” he relays. He’s actually decently pleased. Not a bad effort to results ratio, really, given that he’d given no effort at all.

He gets a polite round of applause and then all eyes turn to Thomas’s bird (Andrea, apparently).

“Oh, I don’t need to go. It’s okay,” she says shyly.

“But you’re our year. I’ve seen you around,” Emily protests. “Go on. It’s okay.” It’s the smile that Emily shoots her, Cook’s sure, that puts her at ease. Emily’s smiles are magic.

“Well, um, A, C, C,” she admits.

“Nice,” Emily comments as Thomas smiles proudly.

“And I got B, B, C,” Thomas says a moment later.

“You’re up Naomikins,” Cook says, knowing that a girl as clever as her is probably anxious to tell her results.

“I got the same as Panda, actually. A, A, B.”

It’s the look of pure love and pride that Emily shoots Naomi before pulling her down into a kiss that makes Cook smile. That’s what everyone should have, he reckons.

After that things settle down, and he finds himself with the lovely Pandapops on one side and Naomikins on the other, Freds just across from him talking animatedly with JJ and Lara (and Cook has to admit that JJ’s bagged himself a rather fit bird...he’s a bit impressed, really).

He smiles to himself. Freds looks the happiest he’s seen him in ages and Effy’s even in the room. He’s happy, too, he realises. That, he decides, is quite an accomplishment. 


	9. Naomi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naomi faces her fears.

_For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul._

-Judy Garland

 

 

She never realistically thought she’d find the love of her life at sixteen (or, well, twelve if she’s honest with herself), but here she is at eighteen having spent the last year and a half with a person she can only describe as just that. She’d call Emily her soul mate if she believed in such things (or rather if she wouldn’t feel like a complete sell-out for saying something that sounds so ludicrous aloud).

She’s never really thought of herself as a happy person. Sarcastic, yes, and she’s definitely still that. Cynical, perhaps. A loner, until recently. But happy?

The thing is, though, that she is happy. So ridiculously happy. And it’s all to do with her, with Emily, _her_ Emily.

She finds herself smiling all the time. All it takes is one look at those gorgeous brown eyes, one flash of vibrant red hair, or less than that, even, just a simple memory or a thought relating to Emily and she’s grinning like a bloody fool.

It’s a bit ridiculous at times. She’s become a closet soppy romantic in what feels like overnight.

Still, as Emily snuggles into her side even in her sleep, always seeming to want to be that much closer, she knows she wouldn’t change things for the world.

She’s had to compromise on things, on dreams she once had, but she doesn’t mind so much. For the first time in her life she’s thinking of a future for not just her, but for _them._ It’s scary and exhilarating and exciting all at once.

She always wanted an adventure when she was little. She imagined traipsing off to Tanzania or the Philippines or Borneo, exploring places that few dared go.

Instead, she’d stumbled upon the greatest adventure of all: love. And now they’re about to embark on the adventure of life together.

She can’t wait.

\--

“You’re sure, Emily. That’s what _you_ want to do?” Jenna asks.

It’s fucking infuriating. It’s as if she’s not standing right there next to Emily, holding her hand, giving her enough strength to even have this talk with her parents, for fuck’s sake.

“Yes, Mum!”

Emily’s getting exasperated now, Naomi can tell. She’s starting to unintentionally dig her nails into the back of Naomi’s hand, for starters, and there’s the way her nostrils flare ever-so-slightly as well.

“I think it’s good,” Rob offers. “A gap year so you can decide what you really want to study. Get some life experience. Work some. Sounds sensible.”

Naomi shoots him a grateful smile.

“Rob!” Jenna practically growls her disapproval.

“Mum!” Emily says warningly.

Jenna turns back to them, eyes flitting to where their hands meet, scowl etched unattractively across her features. “And you’ll be living... _together_ in London.”

“Jenna, we’re living together now. We’ve been living together for almost five months,” Naomi finally interjects. She can’t stand that Jenna still acts like that’s nothing, like as long as things happen in this little bubble of Bristol they’re not really _real_ and Emily’s just suddenly going to wake up and decide she’s not really gay or in love with Naomi.

“Yes, but-“

“No buts, Mum,” Katie cuts in tiredly. Naomi knows she’s resentful that they dragged her along, but Emily needed all the moral support that she could get. “She’s still fucking got her place at Westminster. It’s not like she’s saying she’s never going to go to uni. Besides, I’ll be in London, so she’ll still be near family.”

“Katie, watch your tone!” Jenna scolds.

“No, Mum. You’re doing it again. You’re pushing us away _again_ ,” Emily steps back in.

Naomi can’t help but wonder how they didn’t just always get everything their way when the two of them had each other’s backs like this. They tag teamed their parents so seamlessly.

Naomi’s not sure if they’ve won, but Jenna at least backs down for the moment at Emily’s words, and that’s something.

None of them bother to stay much longer. Some situations are just too tense to stay in for long.

They didn’t mention that they’d specifically be living in Yeading, halfway between their respective university’s of choice (Westminster and Brunel). They didn’t mention the travel outside of London that they had planned for November, either.

\--

They celebrate their results on their own first, before the big party that Katie’s throwing with Effy.

Naomi’s not sure exactly when excitement for herself morphed into excitement for _them_ and when one form of excitement became so tightly bonded to another, but, regardless, she has Emily pinned to their bedroom door within half an hour of getting their results, kissing a fevered trail down the most beautiful porcelain skin she’s ever seen.

“Fuck, Naoms,” Emily moans as Naomi licks and sucks at her pulse point, pausing occasionally to nip at her collarbone.

She’s sure she’ll never ever get sick of that nickname. When it drips off of Emily’s tongue like that, it’s the sweetest fucking sound in the English language. She grunts her agreement as her hands trace up smooth skin, fingertips ghosting over each vertebra in turn. She’s long ago memorised every inch of Emily’s beautiful skin and exquisite body, taking the time on lazy summer’s days past to map every conceivable part of her, but her appreciation and excitement aren’t even remotely dampened by that fact.

Each time she touches Emily there’s a part of her that feels like it’s the first time all over again, her entire body humming in anticipation, her fingers so incredibly stimulated by the creamy, smooth flesh she reveals.

“I fucking love you!” she gasps. “So fucking much!”

Emily’s smile, brighter than any sun, shines back at her when she glances up to her face just before removing Emily’s skirt.

Emily doesn’t have to say it back for her to know it’s true. (She does anyway.)

\--

“We’re fucking moving to London together in like two weeks and she still thinks Emily’s going to fucking come to her senses or some shit! What part of a relationship that’s lasted like a year and a half already doesn’t she understand? It’s not a fucking phase!”

“Naomikins, chillax, man. Here, have a drag,” Cook offers up a toke of the spliff he’s smoking.

She rolls her eyes. Drugs are hardly the solution she’s looking for. “No, thanks,” she turns him down, but she stops pacing in front of him and takes a seat on the bench beside him.

“Look, Naomi, you just need to stand up to her. Tell the old biddy what for, yeah? Tell her where to shove it ‘cause you’re in love with her daughter and that’s that. Her being the world’s biggest cunt isn’t gonna change that, and she’ll see that eventually.”

“That’s the philosophy I’ve been operating on so far, and it hasn’t really panned out,” she sighs. He’s right though. She just has to keep standing up to Jenna. She can’t help thinking if she hadn’t run away that first time, if she hadn’t let her insecurities and Jenna scare her into backing down, then things might be different now.

As far as she’s concerned, they’re better off with Jenna not in their lives, but she can see the pain it causes Emily to be at odds with her mum, and Naomi can’t stand to see Emily in pain. She has to fix this, and she has to do so before they leave.

“She’ll come round, Naomikins. Don’t you worry. I mean what’s not to love about you, right?” He winks at her as he slings an arm around her shoulder, and she leans into it, allowing him to comfort her.

She’d never have imagined on that first day of college that the stupid wanker who wouldn’t stop calling her babe would end up being one of her best friends, but here they are and that’s exactly what he is.

\--

“Naomi, I-I wasn’t expecting you. Unfortunately, I’m quite busy at the mome-“

“No,” she cuts Jenna off. “I have something to say to you. Something I should have said that first time I came here. And it’s important. It’s important to Emily. So I really hope you’ll listen.” She pushes past Jenna into the caravan, finding a rather surprised looking Rob, who recovers quickly and smiles at her.

Jenna crosses her arms and doesn’t move from her position by the door. Naomi can practically feel her defensive hackles rising from where she stands.

“I’m in love with Emily. I have been in love with Emily for a very long time. She is everything to me. She is not a phase or an experiment, and she is sure as hell not some weak-minded girl that I’m corrupting. She is strong and stubborn and smart and beautiful and incredibly sexy and she is the only person in the entire world for me,” Naomi announces, realising that her hands are shaking as does so. Now that she’s there, standing before the two of them, this seems like a much more foolish idea than she’d initially thought. “I love her and I’m not going anywhere. And she loves me too, and we’re moving to London together in two weeks and we’re going to go to uni and we’re going to still be together and maybe someday we’ll even get married.”

The words are simply tumbling nervously out of her mouth now. She hadn’t thought these ones through. She’s vaguely aware that she’s rambling, but she has to get her point across. She has to make Jenna understand. For Emily, she reminds herself.

That’s what love is, she’s realised, it’s when you put the needs of someone else above your own and you don’t even care because seeing them happy makes you happy.

She’s about to continue, but Rob raises a hand.

“Married? I think you’re a bit young to be thinking about that, love, but it’s nice to know that you’re not planning on breaking my daughter’s heart, at least,” he says with a kind smile, before looking expectantly at his wife.

It’s the first time that Naomi’s really bothered to look at her as well. She’d spent most of her speech staring at the caravan wall, trying not to lose her resolve. Jenna’s eyes are wide, and her arms have fallen to her sides. She looks completely stunned, for lack of a better word.

“Isn’t it brave of Naomi to come here and tell us all of this?” Rob prompts. “She must really care about our Emsy.”

“I do,” Naomi readily volunteered.

“I never- I just thought-“ Jenna drifts off and sighs. “Well, you’ll come visit a lot, right? The...two...of you?”

Naomi knows that it’s probably a bad idea, and far too much too soon for someone who’s clearly only still _trying_ , but she doesn’t care. She marches straight over to Jenna and hugs her tight. “Thank you,” she murmurs, before pulling away in embarrassment, feeling her cheeks flush what must be a bright pink.

“Of course, they’ll visit,” Rob says, cheerily. He sidles up and wraps an arm around his wife, who’s wearing a thin, slightly strained smile.

 _Still,_ Naomi thinks, _at least it is a smile_.

“We should all go out to dinner before you girls leave,” Rob invites. “Katie, too.”

“Yes. Definitely,” Naomi agrees. She has a sudden urge to get out of there before Jenna has another change of heart. Besides, she wants to tell Emily. She wants to hold her and kiss her and tell her that there’s hope that her mum will love her just how she is and will be okay with who she loves.

As if sensing that, Rob says, “Right. I’m sure you’ve got things to do. Boxes to pack.”

“Yes. I do,” she turns to leave, but pauses in the doorway. “Thank you for your time,” she adds.

She pretends that she didn’t really need the big gulp of fresh air she takes as soon as she’s around the corner and out of sight. That went better than she expected, really.

\--

“I would’ve loved to have seen it,” Katie laughs.

“There was honestly a moment when I thought she might attack me,” Naomi says with a giggle. Katie’s not necessarily the person she would have chosen for the sister she never had, but in the past few months she’s noticed the changes in her, and, well, they’ve both been making an effort to not be complete cunts to each other. Sometimes that resulted in times like this, when they could just sit and talk and laugh. Katie certainly has a wicked sense of humour when she wants.

And thank God the girl gets sarcasm.

”Jenna’s got a bigger heart than you might think. She lets me in the caravan, after all,” Effy offers with a small grin.

“Yeah, and she used to want Effy locked up,” Katie volunteers.

Effy shoots Katie an amused look before standing. “Right, more drinks?”

“Don’t make mine so fucking strong this time,” Naomi calls after her as she heads into the kitchen.

“Good luck with that,” Katie mutters. “Effy only makes mixed drinks one strength. Do you know how much convincing it took to get her to agree to mixers to begin with?”

Naomi raises an eyebrow. “With you asking? Not much.” She’s not blind. She’s seen the way that Effy’s eyes always seem to trail Katie these days in a crowded room. She hasn’t mentioned it to Emily. It’s one of the few secrets she’s kept from her. In this case, it’s really not her place to say.

Katie glares sharply at her.

“Oh, come on!” Naomi rolls her eyes. “You have to know, right?”

Katie glances towards the kitchen, purses her lips, then nods.

“Well, then-“ Naomi leaves her sentence open.

“It’s complex, yeah? It’s hardly like I’m a muff muncher, is it?”

“You should give it a try. You might like it, Katiekins,” Naomi teases. She can’t resist.

“Fuck off,” Katie says, shooting her a withering look.

“Well, whatever is going on, you might want to sort it out soon, given that we’re running out of time, here,” Naomi points out.

“I’m trying. It’s not easy.”

Naomi thinks back to when she’d thought that, to when loving Emily, having feelings for a _girl_ , had felt like a chore, like something she needed to overcome. How silly it seems now. She’s the happiest she’s ever been, exploring the adventure of life with the woman she loves. All her experiences are that much better for having someone she cares about to share them with. “Nothing that’s worth it ever is.” 


	10. Katie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katie finds love.

_The greatest happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved – loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves._

-Victor Hugo

 

 

Planning a party seemed like a good distraction. She hadn’t factored in the amount of time that they’d spend together in the planning (although she suggests bringing Panda in to help as well, so at least there’s a buffer, another presence, not to mention that she’s really grown to love Pandora and her inane commentaries).

It’s odd, too, having Effy letting her get her way. Fucking disturbing almost. Of course, Effy doesn’t let her get everything. She puts her foot down at a wildlife theme. It would have been fun, too. Fucking creative, yeah?

Tony says he won’t be there. “Not really my year. I’d feel out of place with no results to announce,” he grins.

Katie knows it’s just that he and Maxxie are going to a club, but whatever.

It’s funny, she thinks, that he’s the first guy she’s been able to stay friends with after dating. Not like with Freddie. In theory, she supposes, she’s still friends with Freddie, but there are too many emotions that well up in his presence. Stupid ones, at that. Besides, she never really liked him the way she liked Tony.

It’s why she still questions, sometimes, if that all turned out right, them not being together now.

It was just, when Effy kissed her...Well, she fucking felt it, all right? And she knew that it wasn’t just to shut her up or make her feel better. Not to Effy, at least.

And Tony...Tony was so fucking great about everything. She’d told him, in the end, about not being able to have kids, and he’d wrapped her in a hug and kissed her on the top of the head and let her cry into his shoulder. He’d been fucking perfect, really. Then, when she’d said that it was funny how his sister had kissed her on the lips when she’d told her, he just smiled a smile that had instantly made her think _Effy_. It was facial expressions like that that left little doubt that they were related.

“Right, so you’re sure we need these decorations?” Effy breaks her out of her thoughts, holding up one of the gold coils that they’re going to hang from the ceiling with one eyebrow raised.

“Fucking, yes, already! It’s a black and gold theme. It’ll be stylish, babes. You know, like classy and shit. We need to do something to transform your bloody living room.”

Effy smirks, then shrugs. “Whatever you say.”

\--

It really hits her, like truly fucking hits home, when she gets her results and the first fucking thought in her head is, _I have to tell Effy!_ Not Emily. Not her parents. Not even fucking stuck-up Naomi to rub it in her face that she’s not the only smart person around. No. Effy fucking Stonem. Girl who hit her in the head with a rock (though she never thinks of that when she sees her these days). Girl who she once blamed for ruining her life. That’s who she wants to share her news with.

It scares the shit out of her.

She’d avoid her, really, except they’ve got this party, planned together, at her house, so she can’t.

Besides, Effy calls her not fifteen minutes later.

‘’Well?”

 _Okay, so she’s still not a brilliant conversationalist_ , she thinks. “Three B’s.”

“That’s really great, Katie!”

It’s when she sounds so genuine that it scares her the most. The sarcasm and the smirks she can handle, even when she catches Effy’s eyes flicking down to her tits (and, well, at least the girl fucking recognises a nice pair of tits when she sees them), but when it’s not that, that’s when her looks carry far too much weight.

It’s stupid, really, because she’s finally got Effy as a friend. A real friend. It’s the kind of friendship she’s always really wanted and never really had. The only problem is: what if it’s more?

“What about you?” Katie remembers to ask.

“A, B, C,” Effy replies, sounding almost bored.

Katie’s not fooled these days, though. “That’s great!” The thing is, she is pleased for her. With all her time at the Stonem household of late, she’s learned that things weren’t exactly ideal this year. Or last year for that matter.

“Tony wants to buy us a celebratory, pre-party drink,” Effy informs her.

“Yeah. Sounds good,” she hears herself agreeing before she can think it through. And fuck it, really. They’re fucking friends.

\--

“I heard about you standing up to my mum and dad,” she volunteers. “About time you fucking did that, Campbell.”

Effy had invited her over, of course, as if Katie didn’t see her plenty at home.

Naomi sticks two fingers up at her. But she ignores it.

“That must have been...intimidating,” Effy suggests with a smirk.

“You have no fucking idea,” Naomi agrees. “Katie, your mum is one scary bitch.”

“It’s a family trait, so watch where you step. You fucking hurt her and I’ll teach you a new meaning of pain.”

Naomi snorts.

Not quite the reaction she was hoping for, but she had been half teasing, so she guesses it’s all right. On the path they’re on, it doesn’t seem likely that she’ll have to make good on that threat, anyway.

“What’d you say?” Effy asks, taking a sip of her almost clear rum and coke before casually leaning back and draping her arm over the back of the couch, right behind Katie’s back.

Katie really wishes she wasn’t quite so aware of it. It’d be easy to overlook the gesture, really, but she knows Effy well enough to know that everything she does has a purpose; nothing she does is by accident. It feels like a test.

She preferred it immediately after the kiss when Effy was the one who was more on edge, more cautious.

Katie leans back into the touch like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t make the hairs at the back of her neck stand up and butterflies flutter in the pit of her stomach. They’re best friends, right?

Naomi starts recounting the conversation, and Katie’s aware that she’s being more open around her than she might normally be because Effy’s there too, and they’re definitely friends in their own right (not like Katie and Naomi who’re still only really friends because of Emily).

By the time Naomi reaches the bit where she mentioned marriage, though, Katie’s giggling uncontrollably. She can picture her mother’s face and it’s funny as hell.

Naomi’s a good storyteller, too. Her facial re-enactments are hilarious. That’s one thing she’s actually come to appreciate about Naomi, other than the fact that she makes Emily ridiculously happy: she’s quite funny when she wants to be (and not just in a ‘that outfit’s so hideous it’s funny’ kind of way). That and she makes delicious pancakes.

It’s only when Effy leaves the room to make more drinks and Naomi turns to her with a knowing glint in her eyes and brings up everything that she’s been trying not to think about, that she remembers why Naomi can also annoy the fuck out of her.

“It’s not easy,” she defends herself.

“Nothing worth it ever is,” Naomi replies with a goofy grin on her face, and Katie just knows that she’s thinking about Emily.

It’s easy to forget that things between them weren’t always easy (and more pleasant to forget that a big part of that was because of her). Still, this is a little fucking different.

When Effy glides gracefully back into the room moments later, all Katie can think is that she’s fucking gorgeous without even trying.

It’s funny how something can feel so easy and so complex all at once.

\--

Naomi’s a fucking up herself, know-it-all cunt sometimes, but she’s also right, Katie’s aware. She does need to fucking figure it out. She’d never have thought, earlier in the year when things first went fucking tits up, that this would be what she’d be agonising about before going off to uni in London. (And unlike her sister and Naomi she was actually going to _really_ be in London, thank you very much.)

There are two people she needs to talk to before she really decides anything, though.

She rings the doorbell and waits patiently, hoping that the right person answers the door.

Fortunately, he does.

“Don’t say I’m here. Can we go somewhere?” she says before he can even open his mouth.

His brows furrow and his piercing blue eyes (eyes that are so fucking familiar and look at her in an oh-so-similar manner) stare at her, as if deciphering her thoughts. “Yeah, all right,” he nods, lips quirking into a knowing half-smile.

He steps outside and drapes an arm around her as they walk away from the house with the red door.

\--

They go for coffee, sitting at an isolated table near the back at her insistence.

They chat idly for a bit, but then Tony fixes her with a look that looks so much like _her_ that Katie can’t not know that her time for carefree banter is over.

“So, you want to talk about my sister,” Tony prompts.

Katie rolls her eyes. “Fucking Stonems. Is there a know-it-all gene that just got passed to all of you?”

Tony grins broadly. “Probably.”

She sighs. Now that she’s sitting here with him, she’s not sure where to begin.

“You fancy her.”

That’s another thing about the Stonem family: they don’t beat around the bush (when they’re not playing cryptic mind games, that is). “Say it a little fucking louder, why don’t you. I don’t think they heard you in Berlin.”

His grin only widens. “I fucking knew it.”

Katie tilts her head back and pinches the bridge of her nose, sighing again. “Look, I know this is fucking awkward. And I’m not like sure or anything. And, like, I know with our history, you’re probably not like the best person to talk to about this, but you’re also my friend, and you know her, so I just wanted to ask...things.”

Tony’s grin turns to a smirk.

“Sorry,” she feels she should add, given that their break up isn’t exactly ancient history.

“Well, I have to admit, it’s the first time I’ve ever been dumped for my sister.”

“I didn’t...It was fucking mutual, wanker,” she mutters, but it’s affectionate, really.

“It was still for her,” he points out.

It was. She really can’t deny that. They both knew what that small kiss meant. She’d known it the instant it happened, even if she hadn’t admitted to herself that it could be true until Tony had confirmed it when she’d told him.

“So what did you want to ask?” Tony asks, when she doesn’t volunteer anything more.

“I don’t know. Maybe this was a bad idea. I mean, given our history, and everything,” Katie stalls. She knows she’ll end up asking, but now that she’s here with him, it doesn’t seem like such a great idea.

“Katie, you may have been one of the best shags I’ve ever had, but I think I’ll survive our break up even if you go on to marry my sister, yeah? I like you. And I love her. So ask.”

She can’t help but sit up a little straighter at the ‘best shag’ comment. The boy is a charmer, no doubt about that. She could have done without the ‘marrying’ bit, though. She takes a deep breath, readying herself to ask. “Are you sure, Tony? That she, you know, like, feels whatever?”

Tony raises an eyebrow and gives her a look that says simply, ‘Really?’ “I’m not even going to answer that one. You know.”

Katie sips on her coffee nervously before reluctantly nodding. She does know, even if she sometimes wishes she didn’t. “But we’re about to go off to uni.”

Tony shrugs. “So?”

“In different cities.”

“I think the real question, Katie, is how do you feel, and I can’t answer that one for you,” Tony says softly, reaching out and taking her hand from where it’s restlessly picking at the cardboard of her disposable cup.

She sighs. It’s one she’s been trying and failing to answer as well. Truth is, she’s too scared to answer it properly.

“Look me in the eyes and tell me that you haven’t already looked up train times between London and Brighton.”

She glances up and takes in the kind expression on his face, his blue eyes staring back at her knowingly. She can’t tell him that and he knows it.

He smiles. “I think that’s your answer.”

They drop the subject, then, and Katie’s glad to go back to talking plans for uni and about life in general, rather than Effy in particular.

It’s not until he walks her home (or to Naomi’s which has become home and will stay as such for another week and a half at least), that he brings it up again.

“She’s scared, too, Katie. Something crazy about the two of you is you’re both so easy to love, but neither of you seem to be able to see it. I hope that you can make her see it, Katie. You’re good for each other, whether you know it or not.”

She simply nods in response because she’s at a complete loss for words.

He wraps her in a tight hug and kisses the top of her head. “See you soon,” he murmurs.

“See you,” she says against his chest, squeezing him in close just for a second. He’s the best boy she’s ever dated. Just figures that she’d decide she likes someone else better instead.

\--

She’s not exactly looking forward to the idea of saying goodbye to her sister. Of course, it’s not permanent. They’re not even going to be living that far away from each other, for fuck’s sake. Still, she’s never lived more than ten minutes away from Emily, and that was only for two months anyway, before she moved in with Naomi too.

It just feels weird, knowing that Emily won’t be just down the hall anymore, or even just down the street.

It’s not even like they’re that close anymore. They’re not attached at the hip these days. That’s Emily and Naomi.

Emily doesn’t follow around in her shadow anymore.

They’re still sisters, though. They’re still twins. Nothing can ever really change that. She knows that now. She knows what Emily really meant when she said she’d never really leave her. They can’t really leave each other. The simple truth is, in some ways, she will always know Emily best.

It’s a two way street, of course, which is probably why Emily brings it up before she even has a chance to (and she was going to get around to it, but it’s their last week together, so she was dealing with other things first).

“It’s all right to like a girl, you know,” Emily says as they’re lying in her bed one day, talking about life and reminiscing about good times. “It’s actually really fucking wonderful if it’s the right girl.”

“Did Naomi tell you? I swear to God I’ll fucking-“

“Katie, I’m your sister.”

And, yeah, she is. That’s it, really, isn’t it?

“I don’t know if I even...I mean it’s fucking Effy, yeah? What kind of a head case would I be if I liked the girl who almost killed me?” she argues.

“She didn’t try to, though. Anyway, I’ve always thought you were a bit of a head case,” Emily says fondly.

“Fuck off,” Katie glares, elbowing her in the side before they both end up laughing.

“She really cares about you. You should give it a chance,” Emily turns serious again.

“I don’t know if I can,” Katie replies. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough.”

“Katie, you’re the strongest person I know,” Emily counters, holding onto her face and looking her straight in the eye like they used to do when they were little and they wanted the other to know they were serious. “You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved.”

“Do I?” Katie squeaks, her voice coming out small and weak.

“Of course you fucking do,” Emily replies without even a second’s thought, pulling Katie to her and holding her tight.

Katie doesn’t want to cry, but with Emily she can’t not. Her sister will always be able to get through to her, even when nobody else can. It’s just how they work. She’s got no barriers when it comes to Emily.

“I love you, Katie,” she tells her in their stupid little invented twin-speak.

Katie replies in kind, holding Emily that much closer.

“And you love her, too.”

They leave the subject there. Between sisters nothing more needs to be said, really.

\--

It’s the last night before they leave. She’s running out of time, and she knows it. She feels it like a weight sitting heavy on her chest. She can practically hear the seconds ticking away, slipping into the past and out of her grasp.

Maybe Effy’s feeling it, too, because, as they sit on the hill looking out at the city they’ve called home for the better part of eighteen years (last ones standing; everyone else already gone home to bed except Panda who fucked off to St Andrews two days ago, the first to leave), Effy leans in, and Katie knows exactly what she’s doing.

She can’t, though, so she pulls back before their lips can touch.

There’s a moment of silence before Effy leans back and looks away. “What are you afraid of?”

That’s when it really hits her. It’s not that she might not be straight. Besides, she’s fairly certain that being attracted to the one girl that everyone in the world seems to want to shag doesn’t actually mean she’s gay, it just means she’s normal.

The true answer is ‘change’, which is stupid because her life has done nothing but change all year, and she’s about to move and have even more changes. Hell, her relationship with Effy has already changed so much from where it started. The thing is: what if it changes too much? What if this next change is the one that breaks them? She finally has the type of friend she’s always wanted. She can’t lose that.

She gives her the other answer, though, which is also true and less likely to get her laughed at. “Love. Happiness.” It’s a stupid answer, too, she knows.

Effy’s eyes flash back to hers, though, and for a moment she sees fear reflected back at her, and stupid as her answer is, she knows Effy feels is too. Love’s the one thing they both thought they’d never really have, and that neither of them’s even sure they deserve. For a second, all of Effy’s vulnerability is laid out before her, and she knows that she’s not the only one who’s scared of breaking.

Katie flashes back to a conversation she had with Panda what feels like fucking ages ago, about how sex or relationships or something aren’t any good without friendship first. How otherwise things just get fucked up. Emily’s always maintained that she and Naomi love each other better and things between them work so well because they’re best friends, not just lovers.

Emily always was the smart twin.

“You’re my best friend, Eff,” she admits, realising that it’s the first time she’s ever actually said it aloud. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought it, and it should be fucking obvious, even if they do still bicker, and, okay, maybe their relationship isn’t a typical ‘best-friend’ relationship, but that’s only because they challenge each other, and that can’t really be a bad thing. Not if it makes her feel the way it does.

Effy’s eyes are wide, though, and for once, Katie thinks that the all-seeing Miss Stonem might not know everything. Like what comes next, for starters, which means it’s up to Katie.

“Right, then,” she mutters to herself more than anyone else. She doesn’t give Effy a chance to back out like she did. Instead, she reaches up to cup the back of Effy’s head, pulling her in as their lips clash together. She swallows the surprised sound that escapes Effy’s throat with her kiss, for once just letting the sensations wash over her and going with it.

Her entire body’s on fire and her lips are tingling by the time she pulls away and looks Effy in the eye. “Right, so Brighton’s only like an hour away from London by train. How about you come up the first weekend, and then I come down the weekend after that? Alternate and shit while we figure things out.”

The smile that Effy gives her is wide and brilliant and, above all, genuine, and it sets her heart aflutter.

Best friends _and_ lovers, she rolls the idea over in her head as she grins back. _Yeah,_ she thinks, _maybe that’s how it’s meant to be._

\--

When she’s unpacking her room in the halls, making her bed (including tossing the leopard print throw pillow Naomi’d given her with a smirk onto it) and her phone vibrates with a message, she smiles.

_Got here relatively safe._

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, pressing send to call the number the text came from.

“Babes, you’re going to have to work on this whole conversation thing if this is gonna work, yeah? A phone call goes a long way.”

She hears Effy’s faint chuckle travel down the line, and she doesn’t question when her heart rate increases dramatically and butterflies suddenly appear in her stomach.

“Noted,” comes the single word response.

Katie sighs. “So how many people fell in love with you on the trip down?” she asks, remembering with a touch of nostalgia the first day of college and the way that Freddie and Cook had already been drooling over her.

“Just one, but don’t worry, I set him straight,” Effy replies coolly.

“Oh? About what?” Katie inquires curiously.

“I just explained that I’m not in the market and not about to shag him,” Effy informs her, and Katie loves that she can hear the smirk in her voice and can picture exactly what it looks like.

“Glad to hear it.” Katie tugs open another box and finds a stack of photographs. She sets about fixing them to her wall by her bed, starting with one of her and Ems.

“Tony still there?” Effy asks.

“No. Once we unpacked the car he had to head off,” she replies, tacking up a photo of her, Emily and James (one of the few shots of the three of them where he’s not pulling a disgusting face). She’d been so thankful that Tony had offered to bring her down here, because, much as she loves her parents, she really did not want them bringing her to uni, and she (unlike Effy, who somehow managed to fit everything she thought she’d need into two suitcases) had too much shit to take it all on the train.

“Everything went smoothly, then?”

“Yeah,” Katie assures her, picking up the next photograph. One that Tony had taken of her and Effy the day they’d gotten their results and he’d taken them out for coffee. She bites her lower lip as her thumb brushes over Effy’s beautiful face. It’s one of the rare pictures where she’s actually smiling. Katie can’t help thinking that they both look fucking fit in the photo.

“Good. Well, I’d better start unpacking,” Effy says after a pause, and Katie knows that this has stressed her limited conversational skills already, but she scoffs anyway, “Yeah, cause that’ll take long.”

She lets her go, though, with a murmured, “Talk to you later, ‘k?”

“Yeah. Later,” Effy agrees before they hang up.

Katie stares at the photo in her hand a few moments longer, feeling a pang in her chest that she’s vaguely aware she’s probably going to need to get used to, what with them living in different cities.

As she tacks it up (near the head of the bed so she can see it at night when she’s in bed), she can’t help feeling like she’s laying a new foundation. This one’s stronger than the last, made so by the simple fact that she’s not doing it alone.

\--

The fireworks explode above them, illuminating their faces with greens, reds, and golds. They don’t know the occasion, but they don’t especially care. They’re just taking in the show as they lie in the grass, hand in hand.

Katie turns and takes in Effy’s face as a particularly bright white firework lights up the sky. It’s simply breathtaking the way the light plays over her skin and lights up her eyes so they’re practically surreal in their blueness.

They lie on the grass and watch until the fireworks stop shooting up into the sky and the lingering smoke begins to clear revealing the stars shining down on them from overhead.

“I like watching the stars,” she says. It’s the first time she’s shared that with someone besides Emily, and she’s glad that it’s Effy.

“Yeah, me too,” Effy replies, edging closer in the grass so that their whole arms are touching now.

Katie draws her in closer, relishing the heat that her body provides. She feels her own body heat up at the mere thought of what Effy’s body might do to her when they get back to Effy’s room (or what she might do to Effy for that matter).

For now, though, lying here on her back beside her girlfriend, she’s content to watch the stars twirl and blink above them.

She sees a star dart across the sky, a small blazing trail of white light millions of trillions of light-years away, but tonight she has no burden that needs lifting and no wish to send off on its tails. Tonight her world is right side up and she is loved and she loves in turn. She points it out to Effy, who smiles, and then they lie back to watch the stars dance.


End file.
